Kearns, Utah – On a blustery Tuesday in an industrial park, several men loaded racehorse Seabiscuit onto a vintage truck bound for northern California. No, not the actual horse – he died in 1947 – but a life-size bronze statue, cast in a foundry here and destined for a ranch in Willits, Calif., where Seabiscuit trained and is buried.
Motorists may have done double takes upon seeing the horse peering from the rear of the red-and-brown 1948 truck, emblazoned with “Ridgewood Ranch: Home of Seabiscuit.”
Ranch manager Tracy Livingston arrived in Utah with the colorful truck Monday, proving that some 70 years after his heyday, the famed Seabiscuit still can draw a crowd.
“I got a lot of looks, a lot of thumbs up and a lot of honking,” said Livingston, president of the Seabiscuit Heritage Foundation, which seeks to preserve the ranch as a historic site.
Livingston and his bronze cargo left Tuesday afternoon for Las Vegas, the first stop on a week-long tour designed to mimic Seabiscuit’s “whistle-stop” train tours at the height of his popularity in the 1930s. He and the statue will visit Los Angeles’ Santa Anita racetrack – site of some of Seabiscuit’s greatest triumphs – and San Francisco before being installed at the Ridgewood Ranch.
