EMINENCE, Mo. (AP) – Paddlers on a couple of rivers in southern Missouri may cross paths with wild horses, and a two-decade-old federal law is being credited for what locals consider a tourist draw.

The Springfield News-Leader reports the horses have been roaming freely near the Jacks Fork and Current rivers in Shannon County for more than a century. It’s the 20th anniversary of a U.S. law that protects the horses and kept the National Park Service from removing them from Ozark National Scenic Riverways land on the rivers.

A Poplar Bluff attorney got an injunction blocking the herd’s removal, but the park service won on appeal. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene, and the federal law came in 1996.