She is an icon of Atlantic City entertainment and her life is an incredible story! She is Sonora Webster Carver and she is the woman behind the Diving Horses of the Steel Pier.

Sonora came from virtual poverty in my home state of Georgia.  When she saw an advertisement for a Wild West Show, looking for young women who could ride horses and swim, she took that as an opportunity to better her life and travel.

Her career eventually brought her to South Jersey and Atlantic City in 1929. Sonora performed with the diving horses from 2 to 6 times a day for 13 years. The most remarkable thing about her story is that Sonora rode the diving horse BLIND for 11 of those years.

She became blind after a horse entered the water too steep and caused Sonora to go face first into the water, detaching both her retinas. She kept her blindness secret to the paying crowds, who didn't find out until years later.

Sonora died at a nursing home in Pleasantville, NJ in 2003, at the age of 99.

 

Video posted on YouTube by nagoybog

 

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