Sixty years in the making, Vessels Stallion Farm is the culmination of three generations of a family very different in many ways, but bound by their love of horses and a thirst for competition.

The evolution of Vessels Stallion Farm is truly a remarkable story. It began on a couple of acres of dirt at the Los Alamitos Race Course, founded in 1951 by Frank Vessels, Sr., a native Kentuckian who made his way west during the Great Depression of the 1930’s to seek his fortune in California. Vessels, Sr. made that fortune in the rough and tumble oilfield construction business during the time when Southern California was booming as a major oil producing region. His exploits in the energy industry are relevant to this story in that they provided him with the means to pursue his dream of becoming a rancher, which he began in earnest with the purchase of a sizable piece of land near Long Beach, California. His dream, however, took a detour when the poor alkaline soil of his new property proved not only unable to grow crops, but even worse, the little bit of grass it would support contained substances that sickened his small cattle herd. Perhaps as a result of this setback, or maybe through fate, he began to spend more and more of his time attending weekend match races that surfaced in the region during the 1940’s. He was fortunate that his wife Grace, who had been with him every step of the way in the construction business, shared his interest in the excitement of horse racing. His craving for competition assured that he would not only participate, but would soon hold these races at his wide open but otherwise not particularly useful ranch. In those less-regulated days, Frank Sr. simply put up some bleachers, began charging admission, and let the betting flow. What would later become Los Alamitos Race Course was born.

The horse racing that started as a weekend outlet for fun soon turned into a passion. Frank Sr. loved it, and most of all he loved winning match races and the considerable wagers that were a big part of the action. In order to feed that passion, he began buying better and better horses, and that eventually led him to want to breed some of his own. That, very simply, was the beginning of Vessels Stallion Farm. In hindsight, it appears that Frank Sr. was not able to pursue anything half-heartedly. Weekend match racing turned into sanctioned pari-mutuel racing at Los Alamitos in 1951, and his desire to breed his own race horses became the foundation for a commercial breeding enterprise. As Los Alamitos and his breeding operation grew and complemented each other, he kept moving forward and apparently never looked back. One of his first purchases was the legendary quarter horse stallion Clabber, and along the way he stood such great sires as Go Man Go, Duplicate Copy and Tiny Charger.

The next generation, Frank Jr. and his wife Millie, not only kept the dream alive, but turned it into something bigger than Frank Sr. likely imagined possible. While it is always difficult to follow a legend, “Junior” readily accepted that role. Taking over an already successful operation creates a mandate to maintain that success above all else, and thus the incentive is to avoid taking any risks. Not an easy situation in which to create one’s own legacy. Nonetheless, in one bold move that had been years in the making, Junior transformed an industry by introducing night racing at Los Alamitos. While seemingly obvious now, at the time it was not an easy decision as he was opposed by virtually everyone of importance, from competing racetracks to local authorities. It is very likely that without his vision and the tenacity to make it happen despite the obstacles, Los Alamitos Race Course would not have survived the onslaught of year round thoroughbred racing in Southern California, and who knows what the quarter horse industry would look like today without racing at its premier track.

In addition to running and growing Los Alamitos, Junior kept Vessels Stallion Farm at the top of the breeding business, and along the way managed to win a number of big races, none more prominent than the 1973 All-American Futurity with his colt Timetothinkrich, later a leading sire in his own right. However, his defining moment as the owner of Vessels Stallion Farm came from another canny move that seemed anything but wise at the time. He imported, from Mexico of all places, a thoroughbred colt named Beduino, with the idea of crossing him on quarter horse mares. A match racing legend in Mexico, Beduino would go on to become one of the handful of most important sires in the history of the quarter horse breed. Today Beduino remains a prominent name in both the top and bottom of the pedigrees of many of the best quarter horse runners. Frank Jr. was also an important industry leader of that era, most notably as the co-founder with his friend John Goodman of the University of Arizona Race Track Industry Program, still today the top program of its kind in educating and developing leaders in all aspects of the thoroughbred and quarter horse industries.

Following Frank Jr.’s death in 1974, Millie Vessels took over the management of Los Alamitos Race Course and Vessels Stallion Farm. Millie had been involved in working closely with both Frank Sr. and Junior since the first days of Los Alamitos, but this was a challenging step for her to take on her own. In that day and age, female executives were not particularly welcome in the sports world. Moreover, running a major race track meant dealing directly with many difficult characters from all walks of life, and it would have been hard to find a more male-dominated environment for a woman to enter. It was certainly a lonely task, with a great many of the good old boys certain that she would fail and doing their part to make that prophecy happen. Millie would prove them wrong time and time again. Her stewardship of Los Alamitos was solid and steady.

With Vessels Stallion Farm, Millie had a number of successes. Foremost among them, in 1985 she attended the Phillips Ranch Sale in Texas and, uncharacteristically for her, spent the substantial sum of $100,000 to buy a Dash For Cash yearling colt that she would name First Down Dash.

In 1984 Millie made the difficult decision to sell Los Alamitos Race Course. The track, known in quarter horse racing as the “Big Apple,” was sold to another Southern California horse racing concern, Hollywood Park, which owned one of the area’s two big thoroughbred facilities and was, perhaps coincidentally, also run by a strong-willed woman. The immediate upshot of this decision was compelling for Vessels Stallion Farm, which by that time occupied all of five acres of the Los Alamitos grounds and thus had to move from the only home it had ever known. Millie and Frank Jr. had one child, Frank “Scoop” Vessels III, who since 1981 had been in San Diego County a few miles south of Los Alamitos managing several properties that he and Millie had begun acquiring, one of which was the well-known San Luis Rey Downs Training Center, home to top trainers such as Charlie Whittingham and Wayne Lucas, as well as Kentucky Derby winners and hopefuls.

Among the properties the Vessels had purchased in the Bonsall area of north San Diego County was an old 2,000-acre cattle ranch which was one of the last remaining intact Spanish land grants. A good portion of the property consisted of the fertile valley of the San Luis Rey River, and importantly provided access to a large underground aquifer which was critical to large-scale irrigation in the arid region. For Scoop it was a dream come true: a huge unrestricted canvas on which to design and build the new Vessels Stallion Farm. Beginning during the negotiations for the sale of Los Alamitos, he personally designed and oversaw the construction of every aspect of the Farm’s new home. By the time he was done, the old five-acre stud farm had been turned into a 400-acre state-of-the-art breeding and boarding facility. The horses and staff were moved to the new location in late 1986, and thus it was time for a new beginning for Vessels Stallion Farm. Making the move from Los Alamitos to finish out his career with VSF was the old warrior Beduino, who must have looked around at his new home and thought he was halfway to heaven. Despite all this new activity in San Diego, however, in 1987 the big news for Vessels Stallion Farm was still up north at Los Alamitos, where the three-year-old colt First Down Dash was winning everything in sight.

Taking over shortly thereafter following Millie’s passing, Scoop Vessels was in a dramatically different position than his parents and grandparents. Scoop had literally grown up on the racetrack; his family home was located on the grounds of Los Alamitos. However, the sale of Los Alamitos Race Course to Hollywood Park meant that he would not be able to follow in their footsteps in running the famous track that had been so closely identified with its founding family. The silver lining in this reality was that, without the huge responsibility of overseeing Los Alamitos, Scoop was free to put all of his time and energy into the development and growth of Vessels Stallion Farm. The breeding operation, which for earlier generations had always been secondary to the management of Los Alamitos, became the primary focus for Scoop. Interestingly, however, even after many years had passed, Scoop continued to find his business life tied closely to the track where he had been raised and spent most of his adult years.

Under the guidance of Scoop Vessels, Vessels Stallion Farm has succeeded beyond any reasonable expectations over the past two decades. Space allows for the mention of only a few of the highlights of Scoop’s tenure.

By 1993 it was widely assumed that the idea of syndicating a quarter horse stallion was dead on arrival. No such syndication had been successfully undertaken since the mid-1970’s. Nevertheless, Scoop believed he had a special horse who could break that impasse. First Down Dash had been a Champion at two, and was named World Champion in 1987 after an undefeated three-year-old campaign that culminated in a win at the Champion of Champions. Moreover, he had gotten off to a spectacular start at stud with an All-American Futurity winner in each of his first three crops. So despite the doubts and skepticism that it could be done, First Down Dash was syndicated for $7 million, and the tremendous returns earned by the bold investors in that syndicate opened up a market for quarter horse syndicate shares that continues to this day. Other quarter horse stallion syndicates formed by Vessels Stallion Farm include Fishers Dash in 2001 and, with a group of partners, Wave Carver in 2007.

The accomplishments of First Down Dash are difficult to summarize; they would easily fill the pages of a fairly thick book. Suffice to say that under the management of Vessels Stallion Farm, and with the loyal support of a great group of syndicate members, First Down Dash has gone on to become the breed’s all-time leading sire, with progeny earnings totaling over $60 million and counting. In his unparalleled career, First Down Dash has sired the winners of almost 3,000 races, including over 400 stakes wins and seven wins in the All-American Futurity, as well as 32 AQHA Champions. Now in his twentieth season at stud at Vessels Stallion Farm, First Down Dash continues to add to his enormous legacy, setting records that perhaps may never be broken.

With the spacious and modern facility at Vessels Stallion Farm, Scoop had a longstanding desire not only to continue to grow the family’s traditional quarter horse business, but also to break into the thoroughbred industry as well. He had been looking for the opportunity to stand a thoroughbred stallion at Vessels Stallion Farm, but needed to find the right horse to get that business off to a successful start. His search ended in a partnership with leading thoroughbred owner Mike Pegram in an interesting but largely forgotten horse which had made his name dominating the major east coast thoroughbred tracks.

In Excess (Ire) was a four-time Grade 1 winner who in 1991 had been simply the best thoroughbred racehorse in the world, nevertheless losing out on the Eclipse Award due to an unusual choice of races and resulting disappointing performance at that year’s Breeders’ Cup. A nontraditional pedigree and questionable management had resulted in a floundering career at stud only two years after leaving the track. In an incredible turnaround under VSF’s management, In Excess was successfully syndicated in 1997, despite the almost total lack of an existing market for thoroughbred stallion shares in California, and has gone on to become the state’s preeminent thoroughbred sire of the past decade.

In addition to its breeding operation, the Vessels Stallion Farm racing stable has seen a strong resurgence during Scoop’s years at the helm. VSF-owned horses have won every important quarter horse race at least once during that period, including all of the major stakes at Los Alamitos and the All-American Derby at Ruidoso Downs. In 2006 Scoop fulfilled a lifetime dream by winning the All-American Futurity at Ruidoso with No Secrets Here in partnership with Benny Rosset of Brazil, finally joining his father as a winner of that ultimate race.

Despite the sale of Los Alamitos Race Course in 1984, Scoop never fully left his childhood home. In addition to sending a powerful stable of runners to Los Alamitos each year, in 2005 he joined with Los Alamitos owner Dr. Ed Allred to create the annual Los Alamitos Equine Sale, bringing a two-day sale of quarter horse yearlings and breeding stock to that venerable facility. The tremendous success of that sale has been extremely gratifying, but even more meaningful has been the opportunity to partner with Ed Allred, who Scoop has long admired and appreciated for the magnificent work he has done in first restoring Los Alamitos to its former glory and then taking the facility to even greater heights.

Scoop’s love of the horse and interest in the future of horse racing have brought him to devote a large amount of his personal time serving in a number of industry leadership positions. After several years as a Director of the Pacific Coast Quarter Horse Racing Association, he was named to the American Quarter Horse Association’s five-member Executive Committee in 2000, eventually serving as that organization’s President in 2004-2005. He is a member of the prestigious Jockey Club, and serves as the current President of the California Thoroughbred Breeders Association.

Scoop and Bonnie Vessels were married in 1992, and have been inseparable since that time. Bonnie is actively involved in every aspect of Scoop’s business life, providing guidance and assistance on a daily basis. A successful horse owner in her own right, Bonnie has formed and led several racehorse ownership syndicates under the name of “The Girls,” including the group that campaigned multiple Grade 1 winner Old Habits in the late 1990’s. Scoop and Bonnie look forward to their sons Kash, Colt and Bryan continuing the family legacy into the fourth generation.

Now in its seventh decade, the story of Vessels Stallion Farm continues to be written.