Reconstructing, Recreating and Understanding the Past

By Kat Robbins

Roger Blomquist Ph.D., who is an instructor in Utah Valley University’s history department, is involved in preserving usable history for a popular audience. While working in a career of architectural design he found that all of his free time at home revolved around historical recreations and reenacting because of his involvement in making historical films. Roger started out by taking a second job driving carriages around downtown Salt Lake City’s Temple Square, and soon found himself in demand driving buggies and wagons, and riding his horse, in historical Western movies. While at the time he had no particular interest in history, he found that as he was reliving and portraying it, and there came a hands-on understanding where he developed a deep and passion-driven love for it. As he worked on movie after movie (such as Mountain of the Lord, Geronimo, Great American West, and Lewis and Clark) he found that he very much wanted to pass on this 3-dimensional, full living color understanding to other students of history. To do this, he needed to return to school and obtain the Associates through Ph.D. degrees that would allow him to teach on a university level. While in school, he not only continued on as an architectural designer, but as a movie wrangler and carpenter building, repairing, and remodeling houses.

While working on these films he found that it was too expensive to buy period-correct saddles to use in the movies and public reenactments, so he started to teach himself leather work and made a simple 1850 Texas-style saddle from a photograph in a Time-Life Old West Book.

This is still his first choice of saddles to ride to this very day. Later, as a full-time student he found an old saddlemaker to teach him how to make the more complicated saddles and to expand the knowledge that he already had. At this time he was a graduate student at Brigham Young University and his thesis chair told him that if he would set up the training session, that he would join him. The two of them went on to each build their own Cheyenne-style period saddle under the tutelage of the saddlemaker. The one handicap that they had was that the saddlemaker only made modern-styled saddles, so Roger had to develop all of the antiquated patterns and adapt them to the instruction. Once this instruction was completed, Roger continued to make these historic saddles. The second Cheyenne-style saddle that he made was donated to the Candlelighters in Southeast Colorado for their annual auction to raise money to help families to be able to stay near their children with cancer while at the hospital for treatment.

While searching for a master’s thesis topic, a friend suggested that Roger do it on the Old West Wyoming saddles that he had been making. Thinking that something so fun had to be out of the question, Roger went to his thesis chair (who had made his own saddle with Roger), presented the idea and was completely astonished when he received approval. Roger then traveled the width and breadth of Wyoming looking for any archives or saddlemakers who could provide information on these old saddles and their makers. With the successful completion of his master’s degree, he then went on to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to obtain his doctorate degree because they had one of the best programs in westward movement in the country.

He continued his saddlemaking, sending saddles to Canada and the Western United States during his stay in Nebraska. His original dissertation topic was on ancient Americans, but after a couple years of research decided that his topic was too far into archaeology, and not far enough into history, so he set the topic aside for a time and returned to his thesis on saddles and expanded it to much greater depth on their makers. All this time he continued to work on historical films, using his first saddle in many of them. During this continual experience of filming American history he was developing a keen sense of cultural history that he regularly brings into the classroom lectures for his university students.

Because of his research and saddlemaking abilities, True West Magazine awarded him the Best Western Saddlemaker award in 2005, and the Museum of the Mountain Man contacted

him to organize, catalog, and appraise their large saddle collection. After this, they then asked him to build a reproduction of a mountain man saddle that they could put on permanent display in their museum’s main floor. This he did with as much authenticity that he could from drawings and descriptions, but since there are no known documented saddles left from this time period he had to use his research, saddlemaking, and horseback riding experience as a guide to create the most accurate product that he could.

While his saddles have been used in movies, episodic television, and documentaries, Roger continues to build saddles for an exclusive clientele. While building another Cheyenne-styled saddle for himself, he was introduced to Candra Day, founder and director of Vista 360°, a Jackson Hole, Wyoming organization that is dedicated to supporting mountain people around the world. Nestled in the Rocky Mountains of North America, they strive to bring mountain traditions and artisans from around the world together into dialogue with each other to capitalize on globalization. Several similar challenges and issues face these individual mountain societies, such as sustained development, and hope that by becoming better interconnected that they can find ways to commonly respond to these challenges. As part of this cultural exchange program they presented an American Cowboy Show and Rodeo in both Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan in April 2011. Roger was co-secretariat for the second Women of the Mountains conference in 2011 so he became familiar with Candra during the process and while at the conference, she discovered that Roger was Mountain-bred as well and that his talents at making Old West saddles fit nicely in with her projects. As it turned out, Roger finished his saddle and then sent it with Candra to take over to Central Asia as part of the Cowboy Show and Rodeo, to show them more of our culture. The saddle was not only well made, but well received by the people and is now home residing in Roger’s living room.