Gilbert

Estelle Gilbert Papers, 1923-2003
0.6 cubic feet (1 document box, 1 oversized folder)
Location: 0174; Flat File 2/Drawer 1
Collection #: 064
Accession #: 1993.009, 2004.104

Introduction

Papers and photographs of Estelle Gilbert, a horsewoman, rodeo performer, and longtime friend of Rodeo Hall of Fame steer wrestler Mike Hastings. The collection features more than 40 letters written to Gilbert by Hastings over a period of 18 years and almost 20 photographs of New York rodeos and rodeo performers in the late 1940s and early 1950s. A Mike and Fox Hastings scrapbook covering 1925-1927, photographs of early rodeo performers including a Mabel Strickland photograph inscribed to Fox Hastings, and a reminiscence of Fox Hastings by Reba Perry Blakely are also included.

Biography

Estelle Gilbert was born December 8, 1912 in Ansonia, Connecticut, but moved to Great Neck, Long Island when she was four years old. As a child she learned to ride horses and always had a great love for animals. After graduating from high school, she moved to New York City where she took a position as a secretary for an insurance company. In 1939, Gilbert bought a horse, which she boarded at Cimarron Ranch, a dude ranch near Peekskill, New York. She enjoyed life at the dude ranch, and in 1940 accepted an office position at the ranch, which allowed her to spend more time riding. Work as a trail ride escort and riding instructor soon followed. She became acquainted with Mike Hastings, a former rodeo performer who was foreman of the ranch.

She also worked for a time at Gene Autry’s Flying A Ranch near Ardmore, Oklahoma, a job she got through Hastings who had worked as a stock contractor for Autry. Under the tutelage of Hastings, she was able to expand her riding abilities to include barrel racing and trick riding, and she was eventually able to rodeo competitively in these events in the late 1940s and early 1950s. During this period she became a dude ranch commuter, spending summers at the Cimarron Ranch in New York and winters at the Desert Willow Ranch near Tucson, Arizona.

In the late 1950s, when she was too old to rodeo and commute, she settled down near the Cimarron Ranch on her own “two-horse ranch.” She was friend and companion to Mike Hastings until his death in 1965. She continued to live in the Peekskill, New York area, most often working as a waitress, until 1979, when she moved to California. She eventually settled in Yucaipa, where she became active in civic affairs, including the local animal shelter. She died at the age of 90 on August 17, 2003.

Mike Hastings, who is a primary focus of the collection, was born Paul Raymond (Mike) Hastings in Cheyenne, Wyoming on October 23, 1891. At 11, he ran away from home and found work breaking wild horses. He entered his first rodeo in 1910 at Laramie, Wyoming. He was an old school rodeo performer who was willing to take a crack at just about any rodeo event, but steer wrestling was his claim to fame. It is said that African American rodeo cowboy Bill Pickett, who introduced the bulldogging or steer wrestling event to rodeo, taught Mike his technique, which included biting the lower lip of the steer after throwing it to keep it down. He was also the owner of Stranger, one of the greatest bulldogging horses ever.

In 1917, when the late Duke of Windsor (then Prince of Wales) was a boy, he and the Royal Family attended a rodeo performance at Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in which Hastings was participating. During a backstage visit, Mike put the young Prince on a horse and led him around the corrals. In 1924, when Mike was participating in the first international rodeo in London, the Prince presented Hastings with a thoroughbred horse in appreciation of the thrill he had had riding a real American cowboy horse.

Mike Hastings was married to Eloise Fox Hastings, who ran away from convent school at 16 to join a Wild West show. After she met up with Hastings, he taught her to ride and rodeo, and in 1924 she became the first woman steer wrestler. Later they were divorced.

Between 1928 and 1936 Hastings was the stock boss for rodeo impresario Colonel W. T. Johnson. In 1939, after he returned from working rodeo in South America, he took a ride up to the Cimarron Ranch dude ranch near Peekskill, New York; he fell in love with the place and was at Cimarron until the end of his life in 1965. He was responsible for the ranch livestock and staged weekend rodeo performances for the guests.

His only two extended absences from Cimarron were at the request of Gene Autry. In 1941 he purchased the stock that served as the nucleus of Autry’s new Flying A Ranch Rodeo, and in 1942 Autry brought Hastings out to help on his ranch near Ardmore, Oklahoma, which he did until Autry entered the United States Air Force in 1943.

In addition to his work on the Cimarron Ranch and his friendship with Estelle Gilbert, Hastings also found time to mentor Peekskill local Harry Tompkins, who would go on to be one of the top bull riders in the world. Mike died in 1965, and Estelle Gilbert scattered his ashes on the Texas property owned by the children of Col. W. T. Johnson, which had been his request. In 1974, Mike Hastings was inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame.

Sources
LeCompte, Mary Lou. Cowgirls of the Rodeo. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1993.
Porter, Willard H. Who’s Who in Rodeo. Oklahoma City: Powder River Book Company, 1982.