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EPISODE 20: ALICE GREENOUGH ORR
Howdy folks, it’s the third week of March 2025, and welcome to This Week in The West.
I’m Seth Spillman, broadcasting from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
On this podcast, we share stories of the people and events that shaped the history, art and culture of the American West—and those still shaping it today.
Alice Greenough Orr watched the matador move gracefully through the Spanish arena, executing the traditional flourishes of a bullfighter, but the crowd’s restlessness lingered in the air.
The matador hadn’t finished the job; the bull was still alive, angry and stomping around the grounds.
Over the past few days, Alice had captivated Barcelona with her remarkable bull riding skills. Reports claimed she was “showered with roses by legions of adoring male fans for her bravery.” But Alice wasn’t done yet. With one more daring feat to prove her boldness, she strode confidently toward the agitated bull, mounted it, and held on fiercely to its ears until the beast finally tossed her off.
The matador was booed out of the arena, but Alice Greenough Orr left an unforgettable mark. We honor her memory today, during the week of her birth, March 17, 1902.
Today she’s remembered as the first queen of rodeo, but before she broke broncs and shattered barriers in that male-dominated world, Alice got her start as a rancher’s daughter near Red Lodge, Montana. Her father, Ben “Pack Saddle” Greenough, was a mail carrier and rugged outdoorsman who guided hunters into the Beartooth Mountains. He would often leave his family for weeks at a time.
Alice quickly learned to break and train horses. She had a natural talent for staying on bucking horses, so her father gave her his most difficult animals to train. At 14, Alice left school and took a job delivering mail on horseback along a 37-mile route.
A few years later, when a group of cowboys dared her to ride a bucking bronco at the rodeo in Forsyth, Montana, she climbed on and brought it to a stop. It was clear— she had natural talent.
In 1929, after a failed marriage, Alice and her sister Marge responded to an ad from Jack King’s “Wild West Show,” beginning a career that would take them around the world.
The Greenough sisters performed bronc riding, trick riding, and bull riding. The siblings, including brothers Bill and Turk, became known as the “Riding Greenoughs.” The family business was fearless horsemanship.
Alice quickly became one of the top women in rodeo. In 1933, she won her first Saddle Bronc world title. She was the champion again in 1935, 1936, and 1941. She competed in the biggest rodeos in the U.S. and overseas.
In 1936, she joined a group of cowboys fighting for fair pay and better treatment, helping form the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA).
In the 1940s, she partnered with fellow rodeo cowboy Joe Orr to create the Greenough-Orr Rodeo, a traveling show that toured the U.S. and Canada. They would eventually marry.
Their rodeo introduced the first women’s barrel racing event, a discipline that would become a rodeo staple.
Alice retired from competitive rodeo in 1954 at the age of 52. She continued working in film and television into her eighties. Her final public appearance on horseback was in 1992, when she rode in a parade in Red Lodge, Montana, at the age of 90.
Alice was among the first women inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame. She was also named Montana’s greatest female athlete of the 20th Century.
In 1983, she was inducted into the National Rodeo Hall of Fame here at The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
Alice died in Tucson, Arizona, in 1995. She was 93.
And with that, we’ll ride off into the sunset on another episode of “This Week in The West.”
Our show is produced by Chase Spivey and written by Mike Koehler.
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We leave you today with the words of Alice Greenough Orr from an article she wrote in 1937 called “What Cowgirls Want From Life”: “Out West, they might not go in for city ways, psychoanalysis and the like, but Western women are happier, I believe, because they have to be tough – and that means strict rules of physical and mental health. You don’t see hysterical, dull-eyed women in the saddle. Cowgirls learn early that wants of the soul and body are first controlled by the mind. They are taught that for beauty to be outside, it must be inside.”
Much obliged for listening, and remember, come Find Your West at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
