History Channel chronicles when crazy acts were the norm and visited Fort Worth
Long before seat belts were thought to be a good idea and when cigarettes were considered safe, watching a horse possibly dive to its death into a small pool was acceptable entertainment.
History is loaded with examples of horrible ideas that “back then” were just a night out, but are now unbelievable that they not only happened but that people bought tickets to watch.
One hundred years from now, what will people watch then in disbelief that we readily accept as entertainment today? The home run derby? A movie that lasts 2 hours?
For Father’s Day, the History Channel is featuring one of these ideas that was once a main attraction at the long since defunct Lake Worth Casino and Boardwalk in Fort Worth. “Hazardous History with Henry Winkler” will premiere on Sunday evening. Its second episode, which will air June 22, includes Sonora Carver and her horse, who were famous for diving into a pool 40 feet below.
A wild west show
The creator of this was a dentist who was bored with his job in the late 1800s, so “Doc” Carver traveled west in search of stimulation. Many of the details about his life are an exaggeration in an effort to market himself, but he did align with William Cody, aka Buffalo Bill.
Before their egos ruined it, Buffalo Bill and Doc Carver hosted a traveling Wild West Show, starting in 1883. That lasted less than a year, and then Doc ran his own shows, all over the world. In the process he had the idea of horse diving.
No one is entirely sure of the origin, but he made horse diving a mainstream attraction. A carpeted ramp was built on scaffolding which led to a platform four stories off the ground. The pool was 10 feet deep. People loved it.
Carver had a winner, but he wanted to make it bigger. He hired a pretty blonde woman, whom he introduced as his daughter (but wasn’t). Lorena Carver wore a red swimsuit, a helmet, and rode the horse off the platform straight down into the tank of water.
“Horse Diving” was so popular that Doc Carver expanded it by adding more horses and more riders. The riders needed to love horses, ride bareback, be able to swim and want to travel — and be an attractive female.
He found Sonora Carver, who became so adept she would perform multiple dives a day. Doc hailed her as the “Bravest Woman in the World.” This went on for decades, and overcame a tragedy.
Horse diving comes to Fort Worth
In 1927, Doc Carver died, which historians believe was brought on by the death of one of his performing horses. Weeks before Doc died, a horse was killed during a training session for a stunt in the Pacific Ocean. It’s the only time Carver lost a horse from diving.
Despite Doc’s death, his show continued. Around the same time, Casino Park was under construction in Lake Worth. It would eventually feature a boardwalk and a roller coaster, “The Thriller,” which at nearly a mile long was the biggest of its kind in the Southwest.
It was the perfect place for the horse diving attraction, even if by this time the act was drawing criticism from animal rights activists.
On June 14, 1938, Carver rode atop her horse, Red Lips, in front of thousands at Lake Worth for her signature attraction. What everyone in the audience might not have known, however, was by this time she was blind.
In the summer 1931, on the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, during a routine dive Carver hit the water face first. She suffered retinal detachment, which at the time medicine could only moderately address. Carver was 27, and a few weeks after the accident she was blind for life.
The next year, having adapted to life without her sight, she returned to horse diving. For a while only a few people knew, and her audience did not.
She would dive for another 11 years. By the time she came to Fort Worth, she had acknowledged in an interview with a reporter that she was blind. That detail became national news, and she was flooded with letters from all over the world, many from people with disabilities.
She was later celebrated by famed cartoonist Robert R. Ripley, the creator of “Believe It Or Not.”
In 1942, during restrictions caused by World War II, Sonora Carver’s show ended.
A ‘terrible idea’ closed
After the end of World War II, horse diving returned to America. It was not until 1978 that the act closed permanently. Pressure from animal rights activists forced event planners to shutter a run that lasted nearly a century.
In 1993, an ambitious P.T. Barnum-type invested heavily in Atlantic City hotels and casinos; as part of the area’s “re-birth,” he wanted to bring back horse diving, but with mules. Real estate mogul Donald Trump’s plans to revive horse diving lost out to animal right’s activists.
In 1991, Disney made a movie about Carver’s life, “Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken.”
Horse diving has since become one of those obscure details in American history, an event born from an opportunity to make money, which seemed innocent and fun at the time but now is regarded as a terrible idea in the first place.
This story was originally published June 15, 2025 at 9:28 AM.
