At the Maine State Fair in 1925, Dr. Carver’s Diving Horses made a splash.
People flocked to the fairgrounds in Lewiston to see “The Girl in Red” make a “suicide jump” clinging to the back of a huge horse as it leapt from a 40-foot tower into a pool below.
The Lewiston Evening Journal called it a “Stunt With a Real Thrill” in its front-page headline highlighting an act that had pulled in big crowds from Texas to London for a generation.
While it may seem a cruel spectacle to watch a horse plunge off a tall platform into a pond or a pool below, in those days before radio and television, horse diving held a special place in the American imagination.
The Philadelphia Record called one early display “unquestionably the greatest act…