He Splinted His Own Broken Leg, Then Rode Five Hours for Help
Joe Hooker's horse kicked him in the Simcoe Mountains. Alone in the backcountry, he set his own leg and rode to a farmhouse.
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.
GOLDENDALE, Aug. 20.—[Special.]—Joe Hooker, a young man, left here Saturday morning on horseback for some sheep camps on the Big Klickitat. While he was riding along the foothills of the Simcoe Mountains his horse, which is a fractious one, stumbled and fell, throwing the young man to the ground. Hooker alighted on his feet unhurt, but the horse, in getting up, wheeled and kicked him, striking his left leg with both iron-shod hoofs. Both bones of the leg were broken a little above the ankle. Knowing that it was useless to wait for help in that unfrequented country, the young man took some sticks, a few leather thongs and his handkerchief, and binding up the broken limb as best he could, started out to catch his horse that he might ride to a settlement. His suffering can be better imagined than told. He was compelled to hobble around for two hours before he could catch his horse. At length the animal permitted himself to be caught, and Hooker, mounting, rode over the uneven country for five hours before he reached William Gilmore's house. That gentleman lost no time in bringing him to town, where he procured surgical assistance.
“His suffering can be better imagined than told.”
In an era before rural ambulances or phones, an injury in the backcountry meant self-rescue or death. Joe Hooker's ordeal speaks to the isolation of the frontier and the sheer grit demanded of ordinary people.
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