Sonora Carver’s memoir about her life and her time as a horse diving girl, A Girl and Five Brave Horses, opens with the first time she ever saw a horse diving act. As a horse lover myself, I can totally relate to the idea that having your own horse is the ultimate dream.
Sonora Webster had loved horses her entire life and once (unsuccessfully) tried to trade her baby brother for a horse. Carver was firm that it was never the horse’s fault. In fact, if anything ever went wrong and the rider was hurt (bloody nose, broken bone, etc), Dr. In all the years of the act, a horse was never injured. Carver was serious about the safety of the horses. Billy and Ruth Ditty, who trained and cared for the horses there, agreed. “It was fun most of the time,” she said, “and I enjoyed the applause.” She said the horses were the “true stars” of the show. A 2013 article in Tampa Bay Times quotes Barbara Gose who started as a last-minute substitute diver and dove for just one summer in 1966. The last show at Atlantic City was in 1978. But many young women enjoyed working as horse divers at the Atlantic City Steel Pier as well as other venues around the country over the years. Sonora Webster Carver is the most remembered horse diving girl, thanks to her memoir, A Girl and Five Brave Horses, and the Disney movie, Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken. This is a made-up poster that I created with the wording from the ad that brought Sonora to horse diving at the bottom of the poster. Carver’s death in 1927, his son, Al, took over and was soon able to secure a spot on the Steel Pier in Atlantic City where they could perform all summer long in one place rather than having to travel from town to town for each show.īefore the show was permanently established at the Steel Pier, they traveled from city to city. Eventually, he started the horse diving act, traveling the side-show circuit for several years.Īfter Dr. After first leaving the Wild West shows, he wrote a play. Carver was a marksman who had toured in Wild West shows with Buffalo Bill Cody. The History of Horse Diving Who Invented Horse Diving? So despite how crazy it is, I believe that the horses were not being forced to jump. You might be skeptical about how willing a horse might actually be to jump from a high platform but as one person wrote, have you ever tried to make a horse do something it didn’t want to do? I have and let’s just say, the horse always wins. So did the horses really like leaping into the water? Pretty wild, isn’t it? I’ve ridden horses(and I love it!) and I’ve jumped off the high dive (though only under duress – the low diving board is more my speed) and I can’t even begin to imagine combining the two!
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