The United States Royal Braemar Challenge Caber sponsored by the House of Scotland 
Excerpts from the The Buchanan Banner, The Official Publication of The Clan Buchanan Society International, 1999 Winter Issue, Volume XXVII, Number 1 

The biggest, baddest caber in the entire world is right here in the USA, located in San Diego at the House of Scotland in beautiful Balboa Park.  It serves as the display place for many Scottish items -- probably the most impressive among them is the United States Royal Braemar Challenge Caber. 

In 1975, Edna Horler was Secretary of the San Diego Scottish Highland Games and she and her husband Bill were invited to Scotland by the Royal Braemar Highland Society to attend the Braemar Gathering. The invitation was quite an honor, for the Braemar Gathering is the foremost Highland Games in the world.  They presented the Braemar people with the proposition of San Diego having an authentic Braemar Challenge Caber to test the mettle of Scottish-American athletes in the United States.  The Royal Braemar Highland Society would honor the United States with the gift that the Horlors had endeavored to obtain.

The preparations were made and a fine larch tree in a forest in the Cairngorms was selected.  The new Challenge Caber was wrapped in burlap and stored beneath the grandstand at Braemar for the Winter, as tradition dictated. After the Spring thaw, the caber was unwrapped, carefully inspected by the Braemar craftsmen and deemed a worthy gift to America. It was then waterproofed and laid to dry.

British Airways had agreed to fly the caber to San Diego at no charge, in the belly of one of their big transcontinental airliners. Unfortunately, cutbacks had removed that particular type of plane from their schedule, and the replacement plane could not accommodate it. Several other attempts at donated transportation failed to materialize. Bill and Edna again used their powers of persuasion, and the membership of The House of Scotland agreed to pay ocean freight to San Diego, to bring this dream to fruition.

At Greenock, Scotland (near Glasgow) on the Firth of Clyde, the caber was loaded aboard ship. It crossed the Atlantic, passed through the Panama Canal and up to the Port of San Pedro, California, just south of Los Angeles.  When the Horlers arrived, they were aghast to find that longshoremen, unaware of what it was, were using the new Royal Challenge Caber to roll large crates of cargo across the dock!  The new caber was first put into competition in September, 1976.  After a few years, the Royal Braemar Challenge Caber was retired for a while.

It reappeared in the 1980s and then again in 1996.  It was brought back to the games when Graham McGruer was president in 2005.  The House of Scotland voted to offer a $750 reward for the first person to turn the caber.  The caber will be back at the Games again this year with the same reward offer.   

The Caber is 19’6” long and weighs 176 lbs.