Kitty Wilkins author will be speaker at museum event

Philip A. Homan

The Mountain Home Historical Society will present Philip A. Homan at the society's special Membership Event on Tuesday, July 28, beginning at 7 p.m. at the Mountain Home Museum.

Homan is a catalog librarian and an associate professor at Idaho State University's Eli M. Oboler Library in Pocatello.

Descended from early settlers in Owyhee and Twin Falls counties and a fourth-generation Idahoan, Homan returned to Idaho from New York in 2002. He is a frequent presenter at library conferences and is writing the first biography of Kittie Wilkins, the Horse Queen of Idaho. He has documented pictures and used various documents within the local museum's archives for his Wilkins' research.

Kittie Wilkins was the boss of the Wilkins Horse Company in the Bruneau Valley of Owyhee County and owner of 120,000 range-bred horses, all branded with her famous Diamond brand -- the largest herd owned by one family in the West. The "Queen of Diamonds" was the only woman at the turn of the twentieth century whose sole occupation was as a horse dealer. She sold horses by the train carloads in the biggest livestock markets of the United States.

Homan's presentation starts at 7 p.m. with a caravan to the Mountain View Cemetery where Wilkins is buried next to her mother and brother.

The museum is located at 180 S. 3rd East St.

The special program is supported in part by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, as part of the We the People Initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.