Alice Greenough Orr

Alice Greenough Orr was born in 1902 and raised on a ranch near Red Lodge, Montana, where she learned to train horses. She had a particular aptitude for staying on bucking horses, and as a result, her father gave her his most difficult animals to train. Orr first rode a bucking horse in rodeo competition at Forsyth, Montana, when the cowboys competing at the event dared her to do it. Instead, she married Ray Cahill and had two children. ==Career==

After her first marriage ended, she worked at a boarding house, then turned to a career in rodeo, both in competitive and exhibition events. Her interest in bronc riding began in 1929, when she and her sister, Marge Greenough Henson (1908–2004), answered an advertisement from Jack King's Wild West Show. As performers, the Greenough sisters rode saddle broncs, did trick riding and even did some bull riding. The two sisters, along with their brothers, Bill and Thurkel ("Turk"), were collectively called the "Riding Greenoughs". In the 1940s, she paired with a long-time friend, Joe Orr (1905–1978), and they created their own show, the Greenough-Orr Rodeo, which toured the US and Canada. The couple married in 1958. Their rodeo put on the first women's barrel racing events, and Greenough Orr is credited with inventing the competition. Greenough Orr agreed to any number of commercial endorsements, including some for cigarettes even though she did not smoke. She retired from rodeo riding in 1954 at age 52, but occasionally did movie and television work until she was 80. Her last public appearance on a horse occurred in 1992 when she rode in a parade in Red Lodge. ==Legacy==

Greenough Orr lived in Tucson, Arizona in retirement, where she died in 1995. Among her accomplishments, she was in the first group of women inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 1975. She was inducted into Rodeo Hall of Fame in 1983, and the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame in 2010. She was also listed as one of the "100 Most Influential Montanans of the [20th] Century." ==References==