12/21/2025
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When Alice Greenough was born on March 17, 1902, in Red Lodge, Montana, her father had a philosophy about horses.
"If you can't ride 'em, walk."
Benjamin "Packsaddle Ben" Greenough wasn't joking.
He was a rancher, a mail carrier, a guide who led hunters into the Beartooth Mountains. And he had eight children who were going to learn to ride—whether they wanted to or not.
Alice was the second oldest. She grew up on a ranch littered with rocks, breaking wild horses alongside her siblings.
Her father would give her the wildest, most dangerous horses in the herd. Not because he didn't care about her safety. Because he knew something about his daughter that most people didn't see yet.
She couldn't be thrown.
No matter how hard a horse bucked, no matter how wild it kicked, Alice Greenough stayed on. She had balance. She had nerve. She had something her father called "Willie"—willpower.
By the time Alice was a teenager, she could train horses that grown men couldn't touch.
At age 14, she quit school.
Not because she didn't value education. Because someone had to take over her father's 35-mile mail route through the Montana wilderness.
For three years, Alice Greenough delivered the U.S. mail on horseback. Through snowdrifts. Through blizzards. Through brutal Montana winters where the temperature dropped so low that ice formed on the reins.
She was just a kid. But she did the work.
After the mail route, Alice had a dream: she wanted to become a forest ranger.
World War I had opened opportunities for women. Men were fighting overseas. Women were stepping into jobs they'd never been allowed to do before.
Alice was ready.
But then the war ended. The men came home. And the door slammed shut.
Forest ranger positions went to returning soldiers. Women like Alice—tough, capable, experienced in the wilderness—were told to go home.
So she worked in a boarding house. She got married young to a man named Ray Cahill. She had two children.
And she hated it.
Not motherhood. Not family. But the feeling that she was supposed to be small. Quiet. Contained.
Then in 1929, at age 27, Alice and her younger sister Marge saw an advertisement.
Jack King's Wild West Show was looking for lady bronc riders.
Alice and Marge answered the ad.
They packed their things. They sewed their own costumes—inventing the bell-bottomed trousers that would become standard cowgirl attire throughout the 1930s. They lived in a tent while traveling on the rodeo circuit.
And Alice Greenough became a star.
Here's what nobody understood about bronc riding: it wasn't about strength. It was about balance, timing, and refusing to quit.
Alice had all three.
Cowboys would dare her to ride a bucking bronco at local rodeos. She'd climb on. The horse would buck and kick and twist. And Alice would stay on until it stopped.
"I didn't buck off," she'd say later.
That was the beginning.
Within a few years, Alice Greenough became a household name on the rodeo circuit.
She and her siblings—Marge, Bill, Turk, and Frank—became known as "The Riding Greenoughs." They could execute every rodeo event: trick riding, calf roping, steer wrestling, bull riding.
But Alice's specialty was saddle bronc riding.
In 1933, she won her first World Champion Saddle Bronc Rider title at Boston Garden.
She won again in 1935. Again in 1936. And again in 1940 at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Four world championships.
She performed in 46 states. She competed in front of sold-out crowds that included the Vanderbilts, the Chryslers, sports celebrities, socialites.
But Alice didn't just conquer America.
She went to Australia. She competed in the buck-jumping competitions in Melbourne, Victoria—and won. Twice.
She toured Europe.
In 1932, she traveled to Spain for a year. She thought she was signing up to ride steers.
When she arrived, she found out "toro" meant bull.
Fighting bulls. The kind used in Spanish bullfights. The kind bred to kill.
Alice kept her contract.
She rode those bulls into Spanish arenas—without a sword, without protection—then dismounted and left them to the matadors. Some of the matadors got booed out of the arena. Alice got standing ovations.
She toured the south of France. She traveled to England.
And in England, she had tea with the Queen—Queen Mary of Teck.
A ranch girl from Montana who'd delivered mail on horseback, sitting down for tea with British royalty.
That was Alice Greenough.
Back in the United States, she kept winning. She kept riding. She became one of the most famous women in rodeo.
But in 1929, she'd had a scare. A bad fall. A broken ankle.
Doctors had to peg the bones together to heal it. Alice hit the saddle again as soon as she could walk.
She wasn't going to let a broken ankle stop her.
But in the early 1940s, something else tried to stop her.
The major rodeo promoters announced that women would no longer be allowed to compete in bronc riding.
Too dangerous, they said.
Too dangerous—even though Alice had been doing it for over a decade. Even though she'd won four world championships. Even though she'd ridden bulls in Spain and broncs across three continents without serious injury.
Alice Greenough was 39 years old. She'd spent her entire adult life on the rodeo circuit.
And they told her it was over.
Most people would have accepted it. Retired gracefully. Moved on.
Alice Greenough called her friend Joe Orr.
Joe Orr was a fellow rodeo cowboy from Montana. They'd known each other for years.
"Let's start our own rodeo," Alice said.
In 1942—the year after women's bronc riding was banned—Alice Greenough and Joe Orr bought a rodeo of their own.
Not just any rodeo. Their rodeo.
The Greenough-Orr Rodeo toured the United States and Canada for the next 14 years.
Alice produced it. She ran the office. She arranged contracts. She negotiated with arenas. She managed payroll. She kept the books by hand.
She designed costumes. She organized the acts. She added entertainment value.
And she rode broncs in every single rodeo they presented.
They called her "She-Boss."
The Greenough-Orr Rodeo did something revolutionary: they put on the first women's barrel racing events.
Alice Greenough is credited with inventing barrel racing—a competition that's now a cornerstone of women's rodeo.
She also continued doing exhibitions of saddle bronc riding, even though it was no longer a competitive event on the women's circuit.
Because if the big rodeos wouldn't let her compete, she'd create her own stage.
The Greenough-Orr Rodeo became one of the most successful traveling rodeos in the country.
In 1954, at age 52, Alice finally retired from riding. Not because she couldn't do it anymore. Because she'd done it for 25 years and was ready for something else.
But even retirement didn't slow her down.
She and Joe sold the rodeo in 1967. After 40 years of friendship and 14 years of business partnership, they got married.
Alice was 65. Joe was 62.
"It's a good idea," she told him. "I know all your faults and you know mine."
They settled in Tucson, Arizona.
Alice started a new career: acting and stunt work.
She'd done some stunt riding in the 1937 film "The Californians." Now, in Tucson, where many westerns were filmed, she found steady work.
She did stunt work for the television series "Little House on the Prairie." She appeared in films and TV shows. She drove horse teams. She worked alongside her sister Marge.
She kept working until she was 80 years old.
In 1959, Alice founded the Carbon County Historical Society and Museum in Red Lodge, Montana. She donated items and exhibits from the Greenough family—preserving rodeo history for future generations.
The honors came steadily.
In 1975, Alice Greenough became the first woman inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Hereford, Texas.
In 1983, she was inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City.
In 2010, she was inducted into the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame.
Sports Illustrated and CNN named her Best Woman Athlete by Birth State—Montana.
She was listed as one of Montana's 100 most influential people of the 20th century.
In 1992, at age 90, Alice rode in a parade in Red Lodge—the town where she'd grown up breaking horses and delivering mail.
It was her last public appearance on horseback.
Few people lining the parade route could remember the time when it was a teenage girl on horseback who'd delivered their mail through Montana snowdrifts.
But they remembered Alice Greenough Orr. The rodeo queen. The woman who couldn't be thrown.
On August 20, 1995, Alice Greenough Orr died at her home in Tucson, Arizona.
She was 93 years old.
She left behind her son Jay Cahill, her sister Margie, 11 grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren.
About 60 people gathered at her memorial service. Cowgirl hats decorated the room. Flowers surrounded her prized saddle. A white horse, painted against purple clouds, adorned her casket.
Country-western music filled the air.
One friend told a story about how Alice once gave away the championship saddle she'd won in New York—because a fellow cowgirl needed one and didn't have money to buy it.
"That was Alice," someone said.
She was buried at Evergreen Memorial Park in Tucson.
But her legacy rides on.
Alice Greenough Orr didn't just break horses. She broke barriers.
She competed in a male-dominated sport at the highest level and won—repeatedly—when most people thought women couldn't or shouldn't.
When they banned her from competing, she didn't quit. She built her own rodeo empire.
She invented barrel racing—giving future generations of cowgirls a competitive event of their own.
She performed in 46 states and on three continents. She had tea with queens and rode bulls in Spain.
She worked until she was 80 and lived to be 93.
From age 14, delivering mail on horseback through Montana blizzards, to age 90, riding in a hometown parade, Alice Greenough spent nearly her entire life in the saddle.
Her father had told her: "If you can't ride 'em, walk."
Alice Greenough proved something better.
She could ride anything. Bulls, broncs, wild horses, dangerous obstacles, gender barriers, industry bans.
And she never walked.
She rode until there was nothing left to ride. Then she opened doors for other women to ride too.
That's not just a rodeo career. That's a revolution.
One bronc at a time.
