![]() ![]() ![]() One, named Powderface, had already been sold at auction and was almost certainly destined for a slaughterhouse. The woman on the other end of the line told her Steel Pier had been sold, and the remaining diving horses were headed to auction. Two years later, Branigan, then working in New York City at The Fund for Animals, got a phone call. People came from miles around to see the horses and their riders, the most famous of whom – Sonora Webster Carter – was blinded in a dive in 1931 and later became the subject of the Disney movie “Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken.” But by 1978, opposition from animal rights groups and plummeting visitor numbers in a struggling Atlantic City shut the show down. The horse ran up a steep ramp and then dove, 40 feet straight down, into a pool of water.įor nearly 5 decades, the diving horses were one of Atlantic City’s premiere attractions. Instead, what sticks in Branigan’s brain is the memory of standing at the end of Atlantic City’s Steel Pier watching a woman in a bathing suit and cap sitting on a horse with just a simple harness on its back. Cynthia Branigan, then 11 years old, was there – but her attention wasn’t on the politics. Johnson, who’d by then been president for nearly a whole year, was nominated for a full term in office. Late in the summer of 1964, Atlantic City was bustling with attendees at the Democratic National Convention. ![]()
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