Anti-Wolf Poster Child, Spitfire Lucille Mulhall
If ever there was an anti-wolf poster child, Lucille Mulhall would fit the bill. Welcome to today’s Open Range, I’m Susan Allen stay tuned for a bit of western history. If there were cowboys, well there certainly must be cowgirls, not so. In fact it took the antics of a gutsy teen named Lucille Mulhall who at the turn of the century was wowing everyone from presidents to Indian chiefs with her ability to rope and ride broncs. Ranch raised, Lucy gained fame appearing in her father’s wild west show and so impressed old chief Geronimo in 1901 that the Apache Chief gave her a beaded war vest. Yet it was her tenacity with wolves that earned Lucy the respect of the president Theodore Roosevelt. Imagine this happening in our politically correct environment today but legend has it that Roosevelt when visiting the Mulhall ranch told Lucy if she could rope a wolf, he would invite her to his inaugural parade. Miss Lucy came back three hours later dragging a dead wolf behind her horse. Roosevelt couldn’t figure out how to describe this spitfire , while she was tougher than many cowboys he’d met on the trail she was most certainly a femine girl thus the president never one for a lack of words coined “cowgirl” when he spoke of Lucille. Forever known as the first “cowgirl” Lucy e was as we say out west, “the real deal”. One of the first women to compete in roping and riding events against men her popularity was due to the way she could handle a rope and a horse, also fact she was tiny and ladylike. The world’s first cowgirl was inducted into the both Rodeo Hall of Fame and Cowgirl Hall of Fame in seventies.
