Barrel History Racing

West River women made mark on rodeo

The 9-year-old girl, blond hair flying, stood up on the saddle and thrust her hands over her head as the speeding horse underneath her raced across the rodeo arena.

The crowd at the Newcastle, Wyo., rodeo grounds cheered and clapped.

It was 1939. Rosemary Tope had launched her trick-riding career.

Soon, she would be joined by her sister, Fidelia, who was 10 years older. The Tope sisters entertained rodeo fans with their daring riding tricks throughout the 1940s at Belle Fourche, Deadwood, Rapid City, Council Bluffs, Iowa, Wolf Point, Mont., and Bowman, N.D. They performed at the Black Hills Roundup in Belle Fourche from 1939 to 1948.

A few years later, a young Connie Stinson and her sister were riding bareback on horses and calves at their folks’ ranch northeast of New Underwood. Connie turned her love of riding into a National High School Rodeo All-Around Cowgirl championship, a pro rodeo career, a stint riding bareback broncs and bulls, and a lifetime training barrel horses and riders.

Rosemary Tope Seymour and Connie Stinson Price are just two of the area women who carried on the heritage of women competing and performing in rodeo, from the sport’s earliest days and even before, in Wild West shows staged by the likes of Buffalo Bill Cody.

Cody hired women sharpshooters, trick riders and ropers. Those women made the transition to rodeo when it started in the 1890s.

A lot of them, like the men, rode roughstock -— bulls and broncs. In the early days, some competed with the men, giving them a run for their money.

An exhibit at the Casey Tibbs South Dakota Rodeo Center in Fort Pierre attests that between 1890 and 1942, more than 450 women had pro rodeo careers.

The Tri-State Museum in Belle Fourche has a display on the Tope sisters and has a fascinating DVD on the history of rodeo cowgirls, “Oh, You Cowgirl!”

Standout women riders in the early days of the 20th century included Mabel Strickland, Prairie Rose Henderson, Bertha Kaepernick and Bonnie McCarroll.

Kaepernick, a tall cowgirl who weighed 165 pounds, competed with the cowboys in bucking contests at Frontier Days in Cheyenne in 1904. She didn’t win the championship but she made the finals, according to the documentary.

The next year, Frontier Days changed the rules so she could ride only for exhibition.

In 1910 Florence Adams was the “unofficial” cowboy saddle bronc champion at the Pendleton Roundup in Oregon.

Miscellaneous: Lakeside Speedway - Auto Racing Forum | Big West ...

"It was a track that was tough to win on," Leroy Byers, a car owner and midget racing enthusiast, said of the one-fifth mile raceway. "The back straightaway went downhill. The front straightaway went uphill. The south turn was flat and the north turn was banked. A lot of accidents occurred coming out of the south turn. You had to have a car set up to handle the track up near the fence." It was a great story and a fun read. They really need to do something with the old track. It is basically an historic landmark if you really think about it. The history that surrounds that little bullring of speed needs to keep being passed down from generation to generation so that everyone that did not have the privilege to go to the track and watch the racing there, can know of the passion of those of us that sat in those stands and witnessed the action or those that worked on and drove the machines that sped their way around the asphalt. It was a track like no other! There are so many other stories out there to be told. All one has to do is ask those that remember Lady Lakeside and what she had to offer each weekend.

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