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Howdy folks, it’s the third week of October 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.
Picture this: Theodore Roosevelt, Rough Rider, future president and one of our original Great Westerners, is visiting the Mulhall Ranch in Oklahoma Territory.
As the story goes, he’s talking about wolves and how he’d like to see one roped.
He turns to a small, slim young woman and half-jokingly tells her that if she can rope a wolf, he’ll invite her to his inaugural parade.
Three hours later, that young woman rides back, dragging a dead wolf behind her horse. Roosevelt kept his word, and the legend of Lucille Mulhall was born.
We remember her this week, the week of her birth, October 21, 1885.
Lucille was born in St. Louis, but just four years later, the Mulhalls staked a claim during the Oklahoma Land Run in the north central part of the state, near what is today (naturally) the small town of Mulhall, Oklahoma.
The Mulhall Ranch started as a ranch, but quickly became much more. Lucille’s father, Zach Mulhall, was a showman. He produced Wild West and rodeo exhibitions, which he called the Mulhall Congress of Rough Riders and Ropers.
Lucille was pulled into being part of the act. By the time she was a teenager, she was one of the featured trick riders, performing in front of large crowds at home and at the famed 101 Ranch in Ponca City, Oklahoma.
One of the draws for Zach Mulhall was pitting his daughter against male competitors.
Lucille’s father once bet $10,000 that his 15-year-old daughter could out-rope any cowboy in El Paso, Texas. And she did.
Reports say she beat men handily, though it’s said her success was met with hostility. According to one account, her brother had to rescue her from angry cowboys who were embarrassed at being bested by a teenage girl.
Winning one competition after another, Lucille began to define the word “cowgirl” in the public’s mind.
Will Rogers, who performed with Lucille at the 101 Ranch shows, is remembered saying Lucille was “the direct start of what has come to be known as the cowgirl…”
Roosevelt himself is said to have called her the first cowgirl. And the titles kept coming: Rodeo Queen, Queen of the Western Prairie, Champion Lady Steer Roper of the World.
After she appeared at the inauguration of Roosevelt and President William McKinley, she became a show headliner across the country and even overseas.
In 1912, she was invited to participate in the very first Calgary Stampede and finished second in an event called ‘Cowgirls’ Fancy Roping.’
According to a newspaper report, Lucille “won repeated applause by her graceful and smooth handling of the twirling loop.”
In 1913, Lucille formed her own travelling troupe of performers. By 1916, she was producing her own rodeo, Lucille Mulhall’s Roundup, cementing her reputation as both a performer and a businesswoman.
Appearing across the country and on Vaudeville meant independence for Lucille in the early 20th Century.
“People were getting three dollars a week for housework or for working in a store,” she said. “You could get $25 a week working for a Wild West show.”
Out of the arena, Lucille’s life was complex. In 1908, she married Martin Van Bergen, a cowboy singer who was sometimes her opening act. The marriage was brief, though it produced a son. Later, she married Tom Burnett, son of legendary Texas rancher Burk Burnett, founder of the Four Sixes Ranch. That marriage lasted three years.
She kept performing and competing until 1922, when she retired to the family ranch in Mulhall.
Historian Tracey Hanshew once wrote, “Lucille roped, snubbed broncs and hazed for bulldoggers, but it was her direct competition, roping against the men, that set her apart and earned her the most respect.”
She died tragically in a car accident in Logan County, Oklahoma, on December 21, 1940, less than a mile from her family’s ranch.
In 1975, she was inducted into our National Rodeo Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. Two years later, she was honored at the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame.
And with that, we’ve hopefully impressed Teddy Roosevelt with 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 Lucille Mulhall herself, telling a newspaper reporter in 1907 how she recovered from a riding accident when she was a teenager: “Some people thought I would never ride again, but they failed to properly estimate the kind of material that constitutes the make-up of a girl reared on a great ranch of the boundless West!”
Much obliged for listening, and remember, come Find Your West at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
