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Tex Rickard. Drawing by Cherie Hale.
The Rise of Tex Rickard as a Fight Promoter E D I T E D BY V I R G I N I A R I S H E L
W ! D. " B I L L " RISHEL FIRST CAME TO U T A H IN 1896, a footloose young man out of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Later he lived for several years in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and was impressed with the way eastern newspapers handled sporting news. He established the first sporting page in the Intermountain West in the old Salt Lake Herald in 1900. Rishel was an amateur athlete. As sporting editor—not sports editor as the position is called today—he participated in various sports in Utah and was especially proficient in bicycling, swimming, and boxing. Although he was opposed to boxing as a profession and never Miss Rishel, a daughter of W. D. Rishel, is the author of Wheels to Adventure: Bill Rishel's Western Routes (Salt Lake City: Howe Brothers, 1983) which tells how Rishel blazed trails to scenic and historic sites in the Intermountain West in his famous car, the Pathfinder.
