![]() ![]() She didn't want any help from anyone and used a rope to guide her from her dressing room to the structure. After taking a year off from diving she felt she had to get back in the game and made her return. She hit the water with her eyes open and the impact detached her retina.Ī short time later, Sonora was blind. A horse came off the pier a bit sideways and Sonora had to adjust her balance. In 1931, after 7 years of injury-free diving, an accident dramatically changed Sonora's life. In 1928, Sonora's sister Arnette Webster French followed in her footsteps and became a horse-diving girl herself at 15-years-old. When Doc Carver died in 1927, his son Al took over the business and Sonora married him the following year. The act was a success and Carver toured his horse diving girl across the nation. "It was a wild, free, almost primitive thrill," she said after the dive. On May 20, 1924, Sonora made her first public dive in an amusement park in North Carolina from 40-feet above the earth. "After a couple days of training, I was black and blue all over and I was so sore, I could hardly move," Sonora said. Sonora began training with 12' foot dives and eventually progressed to 40 feet. Within a month of seeing the shows, she started working for Doc Carver. "I was completely spellbound," Sonora said. But one day she checked out the act at a state fair and she was amazed and the event totally changed her mind. Originally, Sonora wanted no part of the crazy horse diving scheme. "To understand how I felt about horses, I want you to know, when I was only five years old, I tried to trade my brother for a horse," she said. Sonora Carver loved horses, so much that she used to skip school to ride them and tried to get one at any means. deep pool of water and the act would be done up to five times a day. ![]() The girl would jump on the horse as it was trotting by and the duo would go off the end of the pier and splash heavily into a 12-ft. That plan would include a young, nice-looking, scantily clad girl who would dive off a 40-feet steel pier on horseback, high above the Atlantic City boardwalk. He saw how easily the horse dove into the water from a great height and a plan came to light. The brainstorm reportedly came to Carver when he was crossing a bridge on a horse and the span collapsed underneath the two. Carver was a sharpshooter who founded wild west shows with legend Buffalo Bill Cody and he had an idea for a unique act in his show. The ad was placed by one William "Doc" Carver. In 1923, 19-year-old Sonora Webster Carver answered an ad seeking an "Attractive young woman who can swim and dive likes horses desires to travel." ![]()
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