Dispatch: Is Frank Hopkins' Hidalgo Story True?

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Outside Magazine March 2004

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Liar, Liar, Chaps on Fire
Hidalgo tells the true story of hero Frank Hopkins. Too bad it's all hogwash.

By Sara Solovitch


	Two Studs: Viggo Mortensen as Frank Hopkins, riding his mustang, Hidalgo (Photograph courtesy of Disney)

On March 5, Disney is releasing Hidalgo, an $80 million blockbuster based on "the incredible true story," as the studio puts it, of a legendary cowboy and his trusty mustang. Starring Lord of the Rings hunk Viggo Mortensen, the film is a nags-to-riches saga about American hero Frank T. Hopkins and his 1890 ride in the Ocean of Fire, a death-defying 3,000-mile race across the Arabian Desert.

The contest, as portrayed in the film, is a centuries-old annual event restricted to the best Bedouin horsemen and the finest Arabian steeds. But thanks to Hopkins's fame as an American endurance rider, he's challenged by a Saudi sheik (played by Omar Sharif) to enter the race with—what else?—his underdog paint horse, Hidalgo.

Yeah, and Cheez Whiz is cheddar. In the Hidalgo version of history, Hopkins was, for starters, a star in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show; a half-Sioux Indian who witnessed the massacre at Wounded Knee; a winner of 400 endurance races, including a 2,000-mile epic from Texas to Vermont; and the greatest rider the West had ever known.

In reality, he may have been one of its greatest confidence men. According to a veritable Greek chorus of historians and other experts who have weighed in on what's been called "the Hopkins hoax," there never was an annual Ocean of Fire race—or a Texas-to-Vermont showdown—nor any proof that Hopkins even rode well. What's more, naysayers add, Hopkins's mother was not a Sioux, he was not at Wounded Knee, and there's no record of him working for Buffalo Bill. One of the few things known for certain about Hopkins, who was born in either 1865 or 1884 (he lied about his age), is that he dug tunnels for the Philadelphia subway system in 1926. It's possible that he never even lived out west.

Hence the question that currently has authors, scholars, curators, and a little-known group of real-life endurance riders hopping mad: Why, in the face of all this evidence, has Disney persisted in calling Hopkins the real thing?

"Look, Lord of the Rings was a great movie, but no one says it's a true story," says CuChullaine O'Reilly, who, with his wife, Basha, founded the Long Riders' Guild, a Kentucky-based international association of people who have completed 1,000-plus-mile horseback journeys. In advance of Hidalgo's early-March opening, the group devoted 11 months to investigating Hopkins's claims, nearly all of which dissolved under scrutiny.

Along the way, the Long Riders asked Dale Yeager, a criminologist who consulted on the JonBenét Ramsey murder case, to complete a psychological profile of Hopkins. His conclusion? The man was a "pathological liar." They also contacted David Dary, a retired University of Oklahoma journalism professor and author of 13 books on the American West, who believes Hopkins was just a pathetic wannabe. "The history of the American West," Dary says, "is full of whoppers."

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