- [Narrator] At the end of a long dirt road, far in the remote sagebrush ranges near Jordan Valley, Oregon lived an old woman who cooked on a wood stove, lit her home with kerosene lamps, and spun horsehair into traditional reins known as mecates.

Her name was Frankie Dougal and we went to meet her when she was 98.

- I was about nine years old, I started.

- [Narrator] The traditional horse gear she crafted gained such a reputation that it earned a place in the Smithsonian Museum.

- Can you imagine that one?

Go back to Washington DC?

Oh my gosh.

- [Narrator] Frankie passed away at the age of 99, but the art of spinning horsehair mecates didn't die with her.

Her daughter Helen and granddaughter Gloria carry on this family tradition.

Mecates are a traditional type of western horse tack, used to lead a horse when walking or as reins to steer when riding.

They're functional, but also stylish.

And the art of making them has been handed down in this family mother to daughter for four generations.

- We gotta decide what color we're making.

I'll do the turquoise.

So you're gonna be down there.

So put them in the black tub.

- [Narrator] With the exception of an electric drill, the techniques are essentially unchanged through the generations.

But Gloria, the youngest generation, is putting her new twist into the family's signature craft.

(cows mooing) - [Gloria] When I was growing up and I was riding out on the ranches, I was called the Colorful Cowgirl because I would show up in all the red Wranglers and the matching shirt with the red in it and the stripes and all the things.

So I've always liked color.

- [Narrator] Gloria takes hair from the horses' manes and dyes them vibrant colors.

Once washed and dried, the hair is ready for the step called picking.

- So this is my trusty picker.

This is what it looks like on the inside.

And see it goes around and the hair goes through these nails.

You gotta beg, borrow, steal, and beg some more to get somebody to make you one.

We're ready to roll.

So we're getting it all fluffed up so it's easier to spin.

So when we're spinning, we don't wanna run into a big chunk.

So it looks like we're good.

You see how fluffy it is?

This is ideal to spin from.

So I have greens, blues, turquoises, pinks, red, oranges, and yellows.

- [Narrator] The various colors will be spun together, creating the patterns that define the look of the finished mecates.

You'll find them hanging in the tack rooms at the Great Basin, the area of the West once ridden by the Spanish Vaqueros, known today as buckaroos.

- The Spanish used them way before we did.

It was a Spaniard who taught my grandmother how to make them.

- [Narrator] It was Great-Grandma Clara who started this family lineage of mecate makers.

She lived on a homestead deep in Oregon's Owyhee River Canyon.

And this is where she raised her daughter Frankie and taught her to make mecates.

- This is a 5-bar from the Owyhee River where I was born and raised.

Born in 1918, taken in there when I was three weeks old, was probably a good 16 miles to the nearest neighbor.

They went on horseback of course.

- [Narrator] In this family, riding horses and making mecates go hand in hand.

And just like Frankie had been raised, her daughter Helen grew up in the saddle.

- I probably have been riding when I was in my mom's belly, I bet.

Because she always rode.

And I know there's pictures when I was like probably wasn't even a year old, I was put on a horse and told to ride.

And so I've had horses in my life my whole life.

And my kids grew up on horseback.

They learned how to ride at a really young age and go long days.

And sometimes they would get mad.

Sometimes they didn't want to go because we were too tired.

But that's how they grew up.

That's how they learned how to work.

And it was remote.

- We grew up without electricity.

I didn't have electricity till I was a junior in high school.

So that's part of this tradition is the rural part of it.

- Everybody had to work, it was not easy.

And that's where I first started making all my mecates.

Okay, so what are we doing with the brown then?

- For the end product, it's gonna be one turquoise, one brown, one black and white, and one rust.

So to do that, we have to do half and half to get one strand because we double them back.

So we have to change at the halfway mark to the other color.

So this is what I'm doing is I'm changing colors.

(machine running) - [Helen] Oh my.

You really got it tight.

- [Narrator] Gloria left the Great Basin buckaroo life for college and an early professional career in the cities.

But in her 30s, she returned to her roots and spent more time making mecates with her grandma Frankie.

- [Gloria] And so she really helped me.

She gave me all kinds of tips and tricks and I went up there to her ranch and really spent a lot of time with her.

- I love to get out here early in the mornings.

The air's beautiful and it's wonderful.

- [Narrator] Frankie insisted on holding true to the buckaroo tradition, and that meant a color palette natural to the wild horses of the Great Basin.

- All these colors are natural, all come from horses.

This here's got three grays and one white.

- My grandma, I mean, you know, she's old school.

All the old traditions, there's no pink horses.

- [Narrator] So when Gloria began to experiment with using colors, she broke with centuries of buckaroo tradition and the three generations of her family, especially Grandma Frankie.

- My mom didn't like it.

She didn't like the colors at all.

And she even said so.

"I hate those blankety blank colors."

"You just can't do that."

That's just the way she was, just a ratchety old ranch lady.

- In the bridal horse traditions, they want pretty and simple but more natural is kind of the way it went.

I'm not totally traditional.

I love all the traditions and stuff, but I just wanted to add just a little bit of my personality into it.

- [Narrator] Helen and Gloria have now made all the individual strands for their mecate.

Now it's time to take the individual strands and spin these all together.

- Okay, that's good.

- This is the workhorse part.

(Helen sighs) - We're good?

They're getting pretty tight.

- It's gonna go together.

Ready, set, go.

(machine squeaking) (metal clanking) - It's really fun I think to spin them together and make one that we both made it.

- [Narrator] And that's it, a finished mecate, made in the tradition handed down generations.

But with the signature twist of the Colorful Cowgirl.

- [Gloria] Sometimes they just turn out the way they turn out.

(no audio) - Great people just doing their thing in their own Northwesty way.

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