The late, great (fake) Texas-to-Vermont Horse Race

A popular Disney/Touchstone movie, titled "Hidalgo"—directed by Joe Johnston, starring Viggo Mortensen, and written by Vermonter John Fusco—has had a number of western, and Vermont, history scholars in a tizzy ever since its 2004 release. The "based on a true story" movie, now available on DVD for home viewing, tells the amazing tale of U.S. Cavalry dispatcher, Buffalo hunter, and stunt rider Frank T. Hopkins, and a mustang named Hidalgo. Hopkins claimed to have competed in (and won) over 400 endurance horse races, including the 1890 "Ocean of Fire" race—a 3,000-mile ride from Aden to Syria across the Arabian Desert—depicted in the Disney movie. But Hopkins, it turns out, may have been among the biggest wild west story tellers to ever warm his saddle sores beside a trailside campfire. "The races run and won by Hopkins make up, to say the least, an impressive catalogue," according to blogger Peter Harrigan. "If substantiated, they place Hopkins well at the head of horseback-endurance riders in history. In Hopkins' unpublished autobiographical manuscript, he claims to have participated in 289 races in the U.S., 11 in Mexico, 68 in Argentina, 38 in Japan, three in India, four each in Italy, Russia and Singapore, five in France, three in Germany, just one in England, and an astonishing 14 in Mongolia. Regarding the movie's Ocean of Fire race: Hopkins came in 33 hours ahead of the next horse. I spoke with a well-known historian who told me that there is no way that race records would have been kept in Arabia in 1890." Hopkins, a one-time Ringling Brothers Circus horseman and pioneering wild-mustang conservationist, left behind an unsettled trail of wild-west stories that historians have only recently begun wading through for the truth. Aside from the not-too-startling news that an Hollywood movie, in this case "Hidalgo", presents fiction as fact, another Hopkins account bragged about a nearly 1,800-mile-long endurance horse race between Texas and Vermont in October 1886. This event, too, is seriously disputed by historians. According to a History Channel documentary, titled "The True Story of Hidalgo", both the Arabian desert and Texas-to-Vermont races, as described by Hopkins and in various news articles and unpublished memories, were flights of pure equine fancy. "Hopkins' claims are so outrageously false that one wonders why the Disney people were attracted to this material at all. Hopkins should have been awarded the World's Greatest Liar Award," wrote Dr. Vine Deloria, Jr., a leading Native American scholar, historian, and writer. However, the Disney movie's screenwriter, John Fusco, claims the screen story is mostly factual—well, maybe not 100 percent of it. Fusco has attempted to present his side of the story. He apparently is the person behind the Vermont-based frankhopkins.com website. You'd think the Long Riders Guild, the world's international association of men and women who have ridden more than 1,000 continuous miles on a single equestrian journey, might find Hopkins to be its hero. Well, the group does not. Officials of the LRG have gone out of their way to caution researchers about Fusco's frankhopkins.com website. They even issued an Internet notice about the Vermont-based site: "The Long Riders' Guild wishes to issue a public warning concerning the ownership, and mission, of the website known as frankhopkins.com... Because our investigation revealed that Hopkins was America's largest equestrian fraud, Mr. Fusco set into motion a series of efforts designed to camouflage Hopkins' lack of historical credibility." Fusco, whose Oscar-nominated screenwriting produced several outstanding film scripts—"Young Guns", "Young Guns II", "Crossroads", "Thunderheart", and "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron"—lives in Vermont. He owns the Red Road Farm in Morrisville, established as both a loving home for retired movie horses and the headquarters of the American Indian Horse Conservancy. The Conservancy's primary mission, Fusco states, is to save the Spanish mustang. Fusco, with Dr. Phillip Sponenberg of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Bryant Rickman of Oklahoma, and the Return to Freedom Organization, are helping to preserve the genetic heritage of North America's Spanish colonial horses before they vanish. Another Vermont ranch which has recently become home to wild mustangs is Pond Hill Ranch in Castleton. The ranch also operates Vermont's only professional rodeo. "Frank Hopkins is a hero of mine," Fusco told the Los Angeles Times at the time "Hidalgo" was released. "The film is based on his horsemanship philosophy. Maybe this is legend, maybe it's created, but there is no doubt in my mind that Frank Hopkins was a knowledgeable horseman and acknowledged distance rider, and more importantly he was an early proponent of mustang preservation. Hopkins still lives as legend, as folklore in that world, and still inspires, no matter what the truth is." Regarding Hopkins race to Vermont, James Davidson of the Vermont Historical Society said, "There is nothing in the local newspapers around that time, 1886, about a race ending in Rutland. At that time, everything was reported, even somebody going to New York City for the weekend. So it's inconceivable that such an interesting event would have gone unnoticed. The only endurance race Hopkins ever took part in was with his pencil." Supposedly born at Fort Laramie, Wyo., in 1865, Frank T. Hopkins' father was a U.S. Army scout and his mother was a Sioux Indian. Hopkins' love of horses began at the famous Wyoming fort while playing cowboys and Indians with native boys and learning to handle their wild Spanish mustangs, then referred to as Indian ponies. While still a teen, Hopkins claimed that he was hired by Army Generals Nelson A. Miles and George C. Crook as a crack cavalry dispatch rider. It was Hopkins who supposedly carried a message to the U.S. 7th Cavalry approving the military action on the Sioux which resulted in the Battle of Wounded Knee in South Dakota. (Wounded Knee took place in 1890, the same year as the Ocean of Fire race.) As an Army rider, Hopkins claimed to have covered hundreds of miles between various Wyoming frontier outposts and settler camps. In the meantime, he learned to speak fluent Lakota (Sioux) by the age 18. By age 20, Hopkins was supposedly the fastest cavalry rider alive. He acquired two nicknames, or so he claimed—Laramie Kid and Long Rider. Hopkins later claimed close encounters with Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill Cody, and—last but not least—Billy the Kid. Shortly after his 21st birthday, Hopkins learned about an upcoming endurance race sponsored by a gambler named Buffalo Jones. The race, which supposedly included high rollers like Jones betting on the outcome, was scheduled to leave Galveston, Texas, located on the Gulf of Mexico, all the way north to inland New England—destination: Rutland, Vt. The winner of the race would receive a prize of $3,000, a staggering amount of money in those days. By Hopkins' own account, he left Wyoming for Texas with an unbroken 800-pound horse named Joe. Arriving in Galveston, Hopkins entered his name in the upcoming race. Joe was "a dark buckskin with black tips, mane, and tail," according to Hopkins. So, by Hopkins telling, on Sept. 6, 1886, 56 riders gathered at the starting line at Old Ferry Point on Galveston Island. Hopkins was joined by a ragtag gang of cowpokes, ex-cavalry men, American Indians, and military dispatch riders. At the sound of a pistol, the riders started off on the long, rough overland ride to Vermont. How much of this Texas-to-Vermont race story is true will probably never be known. Supposedly, race sponsor Buffalo Jones personally financed Hopkins' ride. Only one horse per rider was permitted in the race; and a day's journey could not exceed 10 hours in length. Judges along the route kept a tally of the riders. Each rider carried a card and presented it to the judges along the way north. Aside from Hopkins' personal account of the event, there is no other mention of the race in either Texas or Vermont archives. "We've referenced every newspaper between 1880 and 1890, but there is absolutely no mention of Frank T. Hopkins or a race from Texas to Vermont," says Casey Greene, head of the Rosenberg Library in Galveston. On the way to Rutland, Hopkins claimed, riders slept at night and kept an exhausting pace by day. In the muddy Mississippi country, on the seventeenth day of the race, Hopkins—astride Joe the horse—claimed he caught up with, and passed, the lathered front runner. Two weeks later, 31 days after leaving Galveston, Hopkins and Joe galloped into downtown Rutland to win the race and the $3,000 prize. Hopkins, with Joe as his transport, averaged 57.7 miles per day during the 1,788-mile-long race. In a 1940 article about the race, penned by Hopkins in an issue of the Vermont Horse and Bridle Bulletin, he claimed to have stayed in Rutland 13 days until the next rider rode into town. After leaving Vermont and stepping off a train in Laramie (we're not sure what happened to Joe the horse in the interim), Hopkins claimed he was greeted by Buffalo Bill Cody. On the train platform, Buffalo Bill invited Hopkins to join his popular Wild West Show as one the great showman's Congress of Rough Riders of the World. Hopkins accepted and rode off with Cody's show for several years. Dr. Juti Winchester, curator of the Buffalo Bill Museum at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center says, "We are unable to find any Frank T. Hopkins in our database of known cast members, acquaintances, employees, or friends of Colonel Cody." However, some Hopkins apologists, including Fusco, note that he may appear in one photograph of the Rough Riders. Hopkins' name does appear in the Ringling Brothers Circus archives as a big-top horse performer. Beyond that fact, Hopkins life is an open book—an open storybook, most historians now say. During the 1940s, Hopkins is also reported to have returned to Vermont to visit the Rutland Fairgrounds. He was the honored judge of an equine event held at the fair although no one later recalled the reunion. For a time, Hopkins was the talk of the Vermont equestrian community, primarily because of a few articles he wrote which appeared in the Vermont Horse and Bridle Bulletin; in fact, they are the only record we have of the Texas-Vermont endurance race. "The only scraps of Hopkins' life that add up are an indication that he may have worked in a circus where he would have been exposed to the horse shows of the day," the late Bill Muller, an investigative reporter with the Arizona Republic newspaper, wrote when Disney released its Hopkins movie. "One of the historians suggested that Hopkins was probably a Walter Mitty-type cowboy who wistfully watched Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show pass by on a street corner and invented the whole thing. And that's fine. Made-up stories often make for great movies... Given the exhaustive research done on Hopkins, the story is clearly a work of fiction." Sometime during the 1940s, Hopkins moved from Los Angeles to New York City. And except for his writings which appeared in the Vermont Horse and Bridle Bulletin, he lived quietly in the New York area until his death in 1951. He is buried at Lutheran All Faiths Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens County, N.Y.

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The late, great (fake) Texas-to-Vermont Horse Race

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