Horse Interlude: A Pictorial History of Horse and Man In the Inland Northwest

The Horse Interlude presents a pictorial history of the role horses played in the wheat farming operations of the Pacific Northwest, concentrating on the geographical area located along the Snake River in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. In it Thomas B. Keith surveys the period from the mid-1850s to the 1930s, during which technological innovations progressively enabled farmers to improve the efficiency of wheat farming operations, beginning with the replacement of the cradle and flail by the horse, and ending when the horse was in its turn supplanted by the self-propelled combine.
Detailed photographs of horse-drawn equipment illustrate the ways in which the use of horses changed during three successive periods of agricultural history: the pioneer settlement of the area, the inauguration of large-scale farming, and the attainment of mechanization. Other sections of the book relate the histories of threshers, headers, and horse-propelled harvesters, while the conclusion recounts the accomplishments of the Northwest's greatest riders.
In telling the story of the "horse interlude," Keith draws the reader back to a time of rapid growth and change, a time created by the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the early wheat farmers of the Pacific Northwest and their hard-working partners, the horses.