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.”…