CODY, Nebraska (Flatwater Free Press) – The Cody post office seems like a logical place to start looking for answers to a Sandhills mystery. The postmistress lifts her eyes from sorting bills and advertisements that will soon be delivered to the community of 154 people.
She can’t speak with authority about the city’s history. But she knows someone who can.
“Go next door to the Husker Hub,” she instructs. “To the table closest to the salad bar.”
There, a woman with white hair curled tightly over her glasses sits munching her cheeseburger. Rocky Richards, a recently retired Cody-Kilgore High School teacher with a passion for collecting western Cherry County newspaper archives, is Cody’s resident historian.
Richards asks cautiously about the name – strangers rarely come to town to ask for good news. The name belongs to a businessman, settler and real estate magnate from the border region – Lorenzo Barnes.
“Oh yes,” she smiled. “Quite a character.”
Lunchtime crowds stream into the Husker Hub. A few patrons turn their shoulders toward Richards and lean in to listen.
She points toward the street where the youngest of Barnes’ 24 children – yes, 24 children – started riding his bike.
That youngest child grew up to become an American hero, a celebrity who filled Madison Square Garden and hung out with Babe Ruth and boxer Jack Dempsey. She used rodeo and her dominance of the sport to rise to international fame.
Her name was Tad Lucas and she remains the most decorated cowgirl in American history.
Two locals at the table raise their eyebrows as Richards speaks. Few know Cody’s story or the Barnes family. There are no markers, statues or signs to indicate the town’s connection to rodeo’s elite. No state or rodeo association in Nebraska, not even the Nebraska Sandhills Hall of Fame, recognizes Lucas.
On this June day, the regulars are suddenly less interested in the dish of the day and more interested in the story of the future superstar who once rode a wild horse down Main Street, right outside the front door of this Husker Hub.
***
Ambition brought Lorenzo Barnes to Cody. Born in Ohio in 1836, he lived in Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri before coming to Nebraska. He also fought in the war and had 14 children before coming to the newly founded state.
In December 1862, he enlisted in the 7th Illinois Veteran Infantry Regiment to fight in the Civil War. When the war ended, he headed west. The family eventually settled in Battle Creek.
Barnes’ mother, Martha “Grandma” Barnes, eventually joined them and became a beloved member of the community. Her obituary reflected the town’s isolation at the time.
“There were no telephones in those days to connect her little grass hut with the nearest neighbors, for the nearest and only neighbors were the Indians in their tepees,” it said. “Many, many times … she had walked barefoot across the prairie to fetch a pound of butter – a distance of several miles, but several miles were very short periods of time in those days.”
Barnes, a thin farmer with a thick beard, saw potential beyond Madison County. He followed the new railroad line west to Cody and set up a mercantile store south of the tracks.
The rest of the family remained in Battle Creek until Barnes’ wife, Elizabeth Jane Hall Barnes, died of a lung disease in 1886.
Barnes’ family joined him, and about three years later he married Crawford resident Hannah Gartside. She soon gave birth to the first of their ten children.
In the decades that followed, Barnes built homes, sold homes, and did good business in Cody. The town’s Little Brown Episcopal Church would not have been built without his donation.
“Mr. Barnes has probably built more houses in Cody than any other man,” said a clipping in the Cody Cow Boy newspaper.
In 1902 they had their last child: Barbara Inez Barnes. Lorenzo called her “Tadpole” because she glided around the house like a tadpole instead of crawling. The family shortened the name to “Tad.”
The family raised horses and Tad rode her favorite pony three miles to school.
“I’ve ridden horses all my life,” Tad said in a 1982 book about women in the American West. “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t riding. … I always had horses and rode all day.”
Her Lakota friends on the Rosebud Reservation taught her to ride wild horses when she was 7. She often competed against her white and Native American friends. When the Red Cross held a World War I fundraiser in town, Tad eagerly watched the locals riding wild horses and bulls on Main Street.
Her boisterous brother volunteered her to ride. “Tad can ride anything,” he told those within earshot. She agreed, settling into a saddle too big for her and stirrups too far from her feet. The horse bolted out of the gate, throwing Tad from its back. She landed hard in the dirt. She dusted herself off and found her father did not approve.
But it was too late. She had never experienced the adrenaline rush she got from riding a wild horse. Her historic career began that day in Cody.
***
At age 14, Tad rode to nearby Gordon to compete in her first official rodeo. The next year, she turned pro and again won the prize money and finals every day at the Gordon fair.
“Miss Barbara Barnes of this place was a favorite in the Wild Steer Riding,” said a newspaper clipping, “and it was frequently remarked that she performed better than the other riders of national renown who took part.”
The following year’s Cherry County Fair and Cheyenne Frontier Days programs advertised Tad every night. She became the pride and joy of Cody, an ambitious, determined young woman, hardened by the “tough town” in which she grew up.
“What women did at the turn of the century … it wasn’t very entertaining,” says Gail Woerner, an author and historian who has written several books about rodeo. “But some of them just had a wild streak. They had to have more.”
At age 17, Tad joined two of her siblings in El Paso to participate in Col. Frank Hafley’s Wild West Show. Rene Hafley taught her to ride horses and she became a superstar.
She competed in her first competition in 1923 at Madison Square Garden, where she won seven out of eight years. She competed in competitions in Boston, Chicago, Mexico, England and Australia and emerged as the winner.
In 1927, media company MGM created a trophy in response to the rising popularity of Western films. The $10,000 silver trophy was designed to honor the best all-around cowgirl at the Madison Square Garden Rodeo each year. When Tad won the award three years in a row, MGM made it permanent for her.
Tad kept the Sterling trophy in her home in Fort Worth, Texas, next to her rodeo awards and memorabilia. Her grandson, Kelly Riley, remembered playing with it when he was with her.
“She loved being in Nebraska,” he said. “She had to leave because she had to find an opportunity.”
Tad strengthened her Nebraska roots in another way by marrying Omaha native Buck Lucas, a Western movie star and steer wrestling champion.
While pregnant with her only child, Mitzi, she continued with horse riding and rodeos, taking less maternity leave than when her worst rodeo injury nearly ended her career.
During a trick riding competition at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, Tad tried to slide under the horse’s belly and climb up the other side. It was a trick she had done countless times. This time she lost her footing. She got tangled in the saddle and fell under the horse’s hooves for a few seconds. Cowboys rushed to her aid as she clutched her left arm. Doctors said amputation might be necessary. Her rodeo days were over, they said. In the end, six operations were needed.
***
Tad recovered from her injury and rode in a cast for two years. Decades later, she still couldn’t bend her wrist, lift her pinky finger, or roll her left arm. Her left arm was 1.5 inches shorter than her right because of the bone grafts. It wasn’t until 25 years after the surgery that she gave up horse riding.
While she was working on a book about rodeo clowns, Woerner visited Tad. Woerner asked her why she had retired. Tad told her, “My horse got too old and I don’t want to train another one.”
Tad died on February 23, 1990, in Fort Worth. She was 87. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram wrote that she “went above and beyond the call of duty in the rodeo arena” in a career that “spanned more than seven decades” and dated back to her time as a horsewoman in Cody. Shortly after Tad’s death, Mitzi and Riley established the Tad Lucas Memorial Award. It is given each year to the cowgirl who best promotes western culture.
“It is a great honor to receive the Tad Lucas Memorial Award,” said Woerner. “She is considered the best rider in the world.”
Riley assumed responsibility for the award after Mitzi’s death last year. It is an effort to preserve the memory of his grandmother, the only person to be honored in all three Rodeo Halls of Fame – the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame, the National Rodeo Hall of Fame and the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame.
On a three-day horseback ride to Fort Robinson in 1996, Riley rode along Highway 20 through Valentine to Cody. He trotted through town on land that once belonged to his great-grandfather, wanting to see where his legendary grandmother grew up. A quaint two-story house greeted him.
Within a decade it was uninhabitable, Rocky Richards tells us regretfully over lunch at the Husker Hub. The county demolished it. Now a lonely propane tank stands on the property.
Barnes died in 1923 at the home of his daughter Bertha Cady in Cody. He was survived by 11 of his 24 children. A later obituary for one of his daughters described the circumstances that brought him – and his family – to the town they helped build.
“With the pioneering spirit that filled so many of these soldiers, he began his journey west to build a home for his family.”
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