Photo Credit: Courtesy of St. Lucie County, FLA,
St. Lucie County in Florida has a long history with horses. Fort Pierce, the county seat, is still the final stop of the Florida Cracker Trail--a 120-mile route that was traditionally used to move cattle horses across the Sunshine State. Every year in the first full week of February, dozens of riders set out on horseback from Bradenton, riding east 15-20 miles a day, until they reach the seaside town of Fort Pierce to commemorate Cracker Cowboys and preserve Florida's horse and cattle heritage.
But you don’t have to wait until the end of the Cracker Trail Ride to see horses in Fort Pierce. Every Saturday and Sunday, just a few miles south of the city limits, you can find as many as a dozen horses strolling down a secluded section of the county’s 21 miles of sandy beaches.
For the past 18 years, Alan and Colleen Hayes, owners of Tours on Horseback, have been partnering with the county to offer this unique equestrian experience. The couple’s maiden ride was in the early 1990s with the five-member board of county commissioners and several key county staff members, “and they all loved it.”