Riding Lessons in Oklahoma

Oklahoma reads like two states from the saddle. Ride the western panhandle and it's shortgrass prairie to the horizon; ride the southeast and you're climbing pine-covered ridges in the Ouachita Mountains. The Red River traces the southern border with riparian trails, and the central plains in between hold the working ranches and farmland where much of the state's horse culture actually lives. Guest ranches, trail-riding stables, riding academies, the operations here grew out of Western heritage rather than around it.

Each ecoregion rides differently. The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in the northeast is open-range country, the kind of grassland America used to have a lot more of, and it still runs on ranching culture. Down in the southwest, the granite of the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge is genuinely old rock, and the trails through it are correspondingly rough and rewarding. Layer a large, active community of horse owners and professionals over that terrain and you get a state that serves weekend trail riders and serious competitors with equal seriousness.