One of the most amazing equestrian journeys of all time began in 1912 when 30-year-old logger George Beck decided that the scant living he hacked out in the forests of Washington state just wasn’t cutting it.

The odyssey ultimately ended with the longest confirmed horseback trip of the 20th century. Perhaps most exceptionally, it provided the opportunity for the single longest journey made by a horse in recorded history, a Paint Horse named “Pinto.”

This fact is substantiated by The Long Riders’ Guild (LRG, thelongridersguild.com), an international organization of equestrian explorers who have made continuous horseback journeys of 1,000 miles or more. The LRG boasts being the largest repository of equestrian travel knowledge in history, and they verify that Pinto made the entire trip, dubbed “the ride of the century.”