Sometimes, history that passes through can be just as interesting as deep-rooted local history. Take the story of 62-year-old Annie Wilkins. The hardscrabble life of farming in Maine left her in ill health, destitute, and alone. Her doctor warned that she had 2 to 4 years left if she “lived restfully.”
After spending “35 years on that Maine rockpile and having two husbands leave” her, Annie packed her gear and set out on horseback with her little dog “Hurry Up” to see the world, specifically California. She figured it would be more restful in the saddle than stressing over the inevitable foreclosure. So, on November 7, 1954, with $32 in her pocket and faith in the kindness of strangers, she set out.
Her tramp would take a year and a half and cover 20 states. Along the way, she would camp out, sleep in small-town jails (great food), be taken in by people, or stay in motels. She made money selling postcards, souvenir leaflets, and receiving donations. Her horses (Tarzan and Rex) stayed at rodeo grounds, garages, stables, or barns. She ate her first pizza in Tennessee, was almost trampled by a herd of steers in Colorado, and saw her first rodeo in Cheyenne, Wyoming. In Boise, Idaho, she met the governor and was allowed to hitch her horses to any parking meter. Pushing through Oregon during a blizzard, she arrived in Alturas, California, on November 25, 1955. By December 15, she was in Redding where the town put her up at the Golden Eagle Hotel with her horses kept at the Shasta County Sheriff’s Posse rodeo grounds.
A series of severe storms forced Annie to stay in Redding for a week, but she was able to resume her travels on December 28. She followed Hwy 99W. Her plan was to get to the A. J. Ball ranch just south of Red Bluff. It was three days of walking in cold drizzle followed by rain, which she described as feeling like a waterfall: “It was serious rain. It was trying to wash away California. If we’d had a boat, we would have made much better time.”
A Daily News article announced Annie’s arrival in Red Bluff on December 30. The article stated that she paid Joe Soares, manager of the fairgrounds, for stable space for her horses and that she was riding on an old army McClellan saddle. Mrs. Bernice Reed of Antelope gave her a free room for the night.
Annie reached Chico, Biggs, Yuba City, Marysville, Lincoln, and Sacramento. From there, it was south through Lodi, Stockton, Merced, and Fresno before disaster struck at Tulare. Rex stepped on a rusty nail and developed tetanus, which proved fatal. Annie blamed herself and cried in his mane when he passed in her arms.
California Senator Elliott gave Annie a new horse, King, to continue her journey to Los Angeles, which she reached in March 1956. After appearing on the Art Linkletter show, Annie headed to the Pacific Ocean: after 6,000 miles, Tarzan deserved to have the surf wash over his hooves, even if it was against the law.
Annie returned to Maine in 1957 and wrote a book about her adventures. She survived her doctor’s dire warning by 25 years and proved the naysayers wrong about being too old to attempt something so foolish. She admits that she was sick when she started but was now well and happy, and “in these modern times when the women smoke like men, when they match with men in trades, it’s fitting to the times that the last saddle tramp be a woman.”
