The Fearless Rider of Beacon Hill
A young Seattle woman rejects the damsel-in-distress stereotype after a dramatic horseback spill.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A young and pretty girl was thrown from a horse at Beacon Hill yesterday afternoon. Did she faint and wait until a male biped ran and picked her up? Not she! The little woman leaped to her feet, gathered up the skirt of her riding habit, headed the flying animal off, caught and led him to a stump where she remounted him and dashed off again before you could say Wagon-tire Bill a dozen times. She is the right sort of stuff for a new country.
“Did she faint and wait until a male biped ran and picked her up? Not she!”
This 1872 anecdote serves as a spirited, if slightly condescending, reminder that Seattle's 'pioneer spirit' was often defined by women who refused to conform to Victorian expectations of fragility. Today, Beacon Hill remains a landmark, though the 'wild' landscapes of the 1870s have long since been paved over by the dense, urban neighborhood we recognize now.
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