Anna Lee Aldred

Anna Lee Mills was born in Montrose, Colorado, on April 19, 1921. Her father, Tom P. Mills, was a horse trainer and racer, and raised horses together with her mother, Dottie (nee Marlow) Mills. In 1939, at age 18, she received her professional license from the Agua Caliente Racetrack in Baja California, Mexico, becoming the first U.S. woman to receive a jockey's license. ==Career==

She lost her first professional race by a nose, but went on to win "scores" of other races at state and county fairs. During her racing career, she weighed . But by 1945, having grown too tall at 5' 5" and weighing in at , she retired from horse racing. She opened a riding school in California, and then embarked on a five-year career as a trick rider in rodeos. She taught herself trick-riding skills at night in empty arenas. Among her tricks were "standing atop the saddle of a horse bolting down the arena" and "hanging by her foot from the side of a running horse". She quit her professional career upon marrying in 1950, but continued riding until she was 80. She served as a "pony boy", leading the racehorses out to the track of the Montrose Fairgrounds before races, and also appeared in rodeo ceremonies. After breaking her hip at age 80, she entered a nursing home in Montrose. There she slept under a horse blanket. ==Awards and honors==

Aldred was inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 2004. She was posthumously inducted into the Colorado Plateau Horseman's Hall of Fame in 2018. ==Personal life==

In 1950, she married Wayne Aldred, a cattleman, in Raton, New Mexico. Her 1939 racing license, in the form of a small wooden badge, and her blue and white racing silks, are exhibited at the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas. ==References==