Backyard Games stamps are recognized with  eight designs, consisting of

Badminton,
Bocce,
Cornhole,
Croquet,
Flying disc,
Horseshoes,
Tetherball
A variation on pick-up baseball

Horseshoes is a game played outdoors by two people or teams throwing four horseshoes at two stakes in the ground 40 feet apart. Like many modern games, its origins can be traced back thousands of years.

One of the sports in the ancient Olympic Games was discus throwing, a sport that dates to at least 708 BCE. Later, when players couldn’t afford or find a discus with which to practice, they used horseshoes. These devices had been attached to horses’ hoofs since the second century BCE. It is thought that soldiers in both the Greek and Roman armies drove a stake in the ground and threw discarded horseshoes at it in their spare time.

Closely related to the game of horseshoes is quoits. Which game was first is unknown. Quoits was played with a metal disk that had a hole in the middle and may have been primarily used as a weapon. Some historians believe that Roman officers threw quoits at a stake, while their subordinates improvised by using old horseshoes. Other researchers think that soldiers of various ranks pitched horseshoes and someone came up with the idea of making them into a ring.

In any case, both games were probably played on and off over the centuries and horseshoes and quoits used interchangeably depending on what were available. We know that quoits was played in 14th century England before being banned by authorities in 1388 as it distracted soldiers from archery practice. English peasants were playing both games in the 16th century and later took them to North America. In the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), US soldiers played horseshoes to such an extent that England’s Duke of Wellington later wrote that “the war was won by pitchers of horse hardware.” During the American Civil War (1861-1865), Union soldiers threw mule shoes.

The first attempt to standardize the rules took place in England in 1869. The stakes were set 57 feet apart and the maximum diameter of the quoit was eight inches. For non-ringers, measurements for points were based on the part of the quoit nearest the stake. These rules were also used in the US. There were no formal competitions or records, although soldiers returning from wars were keen horseshoe players and got their communities interested. Horseshoe pitching courts were constructed in cities, towns and farming areas across the US and Canada. It became a popular game for the whole family, although differences in rules arose locally. A horseshoe club may have been formed in Pennsylvania in 1899.

The first horseshoe pitching world championship was held in Bronson, Kansas in 1910. The stakes were just two inches tall and set 38 feet apart. Ringers scored five points, leaners three,