March marks Women’s History Month and the sport of rodeo wouldn’t be what it is today without the women who helped pave the way. One legendary woman was Lucille Mulhall, as she became one of the first female ropers to enter the arena.
Lucille Mulhall in Rodeo
Born on her family’s ranch near Guthrie, Oklahoma all the way back in 1885, she was raised during a time when some of the rodeo events in history were popping up across the country. Her father Zack, was a roper and the producer of Mulhall’s Congress of Rough Riders and Ropers, so it was no surprise when she discovered that roping ran in her blood.
It was the cowboys who rode in to stay on her father’s ranch that taught her the art of the lasso. Found in an article on Petticoats and Pistols, Lucille was just 10 years old when she began as a performer for men who came to her father’s ranch. At 13, she started performing in front of thousands.
By the time she was 15 years old (1900), she had already been performing rope tricks in front of crowds that numbered in the thousands. Lucille’s skills were so impressive that her father placed a $10,000 bet ($387,204 today) that she could out-rope any of the cowboys down in Texas, according to an article in The Team Roping Journal…