Saddle tramp


A saddle tramp is a person who wanders from place to place on horseback, often doing odd jobs, then moving on.
The earliest known use of the term was in the 1922 Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. It was distinct from nomadic cowboy, an itinerant who worked with cattle.
One of the most famous saddle tramps was a woman: Mesannie Wilkins, a 63-year-old farmer who made national headlines in the mid-1950s by traveling thousands of miles from Maine to California by horseback.
In 1936, students at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, founded the spirit and sports-boosting club Saddle Tramps. Tech student Arch Lamb said he chose the name from stories of traveling men who would come to a farm for a brief time, fix up some things, and move on.
In modern times, "saddle tramp" can refer to a biker. In 2016, Corey Baum from the band Croy and the Boys said, "I doesn’t matter if he’s on a horse or a Honda."

In popular culture

Saddle tramps in literature