Margaret Ives Abbott was born in Calcutta, India. Her father died when she was very young, and afterward, she moved with her mother to Boston, MA. When she was a teenager, her mother, Mary Abbott, was appointed as the literary editor of The Chicago Herald, and the family moved to Chicago. There, Abbott and her mother joined the Chicago Golf Club and learned how to golf. Soon, she began to participate and win local tournaments, been featured regularly in the Chicago Tribune. In 1899, at the age of 21, Abbott moved to Paris with her mother to study art and music, continuing to play golf in her free time. In 1900, the Olympics games (then called the International Championship) took place in Paris. The event was in conjunction with the World’s Fair and spread over six months. It was the first time women were allowed to compete in the games, and only in five sports – croquet, tennis, equestrianism, sailing, and golf. At the time, the perception was that women lack the physical ability to play sport, and they might be injured if they will, so the golf tournament for women was limited to a 9-hole course, while the men’s had the standard 18-hole. Abbott saw a newspaper ad inviting women to compete in a golf tournament in nearby Compiegne. She and her mother decided to participate without knowing it was an Olympic event. On October 4, 1900, 22 years old Abbott finished the game in 1st place with a score of 47, and unconscious to her achievement, she became the first American woman to win the Olympics. It was only decades later that Abbott’s history-making was revealed when Professor Paula Welch from the University of Florida encounter Abbott’s name, and her research uncovered Abbott’s hidden story. After the game, Abbott finished her studies in Paris and met the writer Finley Peter Dunne. In 1902, the couple married and returned to the US. Throughout her life, she continued to play golf for her own enjoyment. She died at the age of 76, never realizing she is an Olympic champion. Read more...

Cronin was born in Denver, Colorado, to a working-class family. After graduating high school at 16, she began to work as an accounting clerk at Western Union, a job she held until her retirement. At the age of 27, she was bored and seeking new experiences, so on April 24, 1921, she joined a hiking trip of the Colorado Mountain Club to Beaver Brook Trail. Afterward, she became a regular guest of the CMC and soon became a member. Only four months after her first hike, she climbed her first Fourteener – Longs Peak at 14,259 feet. It was led by Agnes Vaille, an experienced climber and one of the early members of the CMC. From this day on, the two paired up to accomplish the mission of becoming members of the 14,000-Footers Club – an exclusive list of people who climbed all of Colorado’s fourteeners. In the following years, the two climbers traveled throughout the state, summiting one peak after another, and by the age of 31, Cronin had reached the summits of more than 23 fourteeners. On January 12, 1925, Agnes Vaille climbed the east face of Longs Peak and froze to death during a surprise snowstorm. Cronin’s response to her friend’s tragic death was to dedicate her life to accomplish Vaille’s dream to become the first woman to climb all of Colorado fourteeners. In that same year, she reached five new peaks, getting closer and closer to her goal. A year later, she elected as a member of the CMC Board of Directors, and between reaching one fourteener after another, she led CMC hiking trips. On Labor Day Weekend, 1934, she summited the peaks of Mt. Belford and Mt. Oxford, and by that, 41-year-old Cronin became the first woman to summit all of Colorado’s fourteeners and achieving the goal her friend set a decade earlier. She remained a climber and an active member of the CMC until she had to relocate to Nebraska and then to Texas due to her job. With no many mountains in those states, she had to give up her passion, and she climbed only on rare occasions. After she retired from her job, she moved to live near her sister in Seattle. She died at the age of 88. Read more...