A skydiver, a snake handler, a barnstormer and a future doctor made national headlines from Wyoming as part of an outrageous stunt in 1941.
It started with a $50 bet between the 29-year-old skydiver, George Hopkins, and snake handler Earl Brockelsby about parachuting onto the top of Devils Tower.
Hopkins, born in South Dakota and raised in Oregon, had five months earlier in 1941 returned from England after serving as a civilian parachuting instructor for the Royal Air Force.
The London Sunday Dispatch on Oct 5, 1941, also mentioned that Hopkins, an accomplished pilot, had flown with the RAF in the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1939. He had also frequently served as copilot on bombers ferried to the British Isles from Newfoundland.
“Hopkins began parachuting when he was 12 years old, joining the Old Gates Flying Circus in California,” the Rapid City Journal reported Oct. 2, 1941. “Later he became associated with Hangar Six, famed aerial stunt men’s organization of San Antonio, Texas.”
He had logged more than 2,300 jumps and held the record for the longest free fall from 20,000 feet before he pulled the rip cord.
Additionally, Hopkins had been a stuntman for MGM Studios in Hollywood, worked in China instructing nationalist Chinese troops in parachuting and in Brazil on an aerial photography crew.
As for Brockelsby, in 1935 the then 19-year-old worked for a Rapid City tourist attraction called Hidden City as a guide.
He would put a rattlesnake under his hat and in the course of his banter remove his hat for tourists. Their shock gave him the idea to start his own tourist spot called Reptile Gardens in 1937, which remains a strong attraction now.
There, he would amaze people by climbing into a pit with snakes.
In 1941, Brockelsby encouraged and helped the Rapid City Chamber of Commerce sponsor an air show with Hopkin’s as the main attraction.
Hopkins was to attempt to break a world record for parachute jumps in a day at an event Oct. 12. Proceeds would go to help build a local hospital.
The Bet
Meanwhile, Brockelsby had bet Hopkins $50 he couldn’t land on Devils Tower.
The local KOTA radio station as well as photographers were present Wednesday, Oct. 1, 1941, when Hopkins jumped out of a plane just after 8 a.m.
They never asked for permission from the National Park Service for the stunt. Devils Tower was a national monument then as it is now.
“This was no exhibition jumping. It was to let people know what a person can do with a parachute if they really know their parachutes,” Hopkins said after the stunt. “I had always wanted to hit the impossible and this was it.”
Hopkins told a Rapid City Journal reporter in a story published Oct. 7, 1941, that he was 800 feet over the tower and 100 feet to the side when he bailed out of the plane flown by Joe Quinn of Rapid City.
He “ballooned the chute” as he approached the tower and aimed for a boulder he could grab to keep himself from being blown off by the wind.=
He landed, grabbed the boulder and collapsed his chute.
Success!
George Hopkins strikes a pose with Devils Tower in the background. He successfully parachuted on top of it on Oct. 1, 1941. (Courtesy National Park Service) 
Entrepreneur Earl Brockelsby of Rapid City with a snake. He made the bet with George Hopkins about parachuting onto the top of Devils Tower. (Courtesy Visit Rapid City) 
George Hopkins returned to Devils Tower in 1967 with his family. (Courtesy National Park Service) 
Clyde Ice at 52 became George Hopkins' lifeline by dropping food and supplies. He endangered his life in the process. (Courtesy South Dakota Hall of Fame) 
Jack Durrance led the rescue efforts to bring George Hopkins down safely. (Courtesy National Park Service)
OK, Now What?
The plan to get off the 867-foot tower involved a sledgehammer, a Ford axle sharpened at one end, a hayloft pulley and two strands of rope, according to the book “Devils Tower Stories in Stone” by Mary Alice Gunderson.
Hopkins was going to hammer the axle into the rock, attach the pulley, and with the rope through the pulley, lower himself hand over hand.
Quinn returned to a nearby field, picked up the equipment and flew back over. Whether the axle and sledgehammer made it to the top of the tower with Hopkins is not clear.
Quinn’s attempt in the tricky winds around the tower to drop the rope went awry. It fell to the side of the tower and wedged in a crevice 40 feet below Hopkins. Quinn then flew back to Rapid City.
Hopkins communicated with Brockelsby on the ground by yelling or throwing down notes and informed him of the rope issue. Brockelsby needed a skilled pilot to drop another rope.
Clyde Ice of Spearfish, South Dakota, was contacted and agreed to the job.
Ice, 52, likely could sympathize with a good stunt. He had barnstormed, parachuted, done stunt work and been a charter pilot.
The farmer taught himself to fly in 1919 after trading two cars for a World War I Jenny biplane. Ice got the plane from a fellow farmer, this one in North Dakota. The farmer had received it as a prize for selling St. Paul Dispatch subscriptions.
The North Dakota man did not know enough to tie the plane down and it had flipped over in the wind.
Ice flipped it back on its wheels.
“I just got in it and flew it, believe it or not,” he said, as quoted on the South Dakota Hall of Fame website. “There just didn’t seem to be anything to it.”
In 1941, Ice ran operations at Black Hills Airport in Spearfish and taught flying.
On the afternoon of Oct. 1, 1941, Ice flew over Devils Tower and dropped a loosely coiled rope that became tangled. Hopkins dropped a note to Brockelsby that there was no way he could untangle it and get down before darkness hit.
Hopkins was stranded.
Ice again flew over and dropped blankets, food, a tarp and a note from Brockelsby that they would get him off the next day.
Then the national monument’s custodian, Newell Joyner, became involved in discussions with Brockelsby.
Fog enveloped the tower the next morning and Hopkins had sent a note down saying that he would just try and parachute off the tower.
Joyner nixed that idea.
Instead, a park ranger and climbing guide from Colorado with alpine rescue equipment were sent for.
Help On The Way
On day three, when Colorado Park Ranger Ernest Field and climber Warren Gorrell arrived, they tried to climb the tower, and because of conditions ran into difficulty.
One of them slipped but was saved by a rope. They came back down.
Then Joyner received a telegram from Dartmouth College medical student Jack Durrance that he was headed west to help with the rescue, and he was bringing other climbers.
Durrance’s name was already known because in 1938, he and a buddy had climbed Devils Tower and established a new route to the top. The next year in 1939 he was on an American team attempting to climb K2 in Kashmir. Four of members of his team died on the peak. Durrance was blamed by the team leader for the incident.
Durrance later in life would say that he never defended himself from the charge because, “I never felt anyone would listen to me.”
Was his offer to help in Wyoming a chance to redeem himself from those accusations?
Still Stuck On The Tower
By now, the story of Hopkins being stranded atop Devils Tower was making headlines around the nation. People were riveted, wondering if he’d get down, and if he did, would he be live.
Meanwhile, Hopkins owed his life on Ice as the veteran pilot continued a series of food and supplies drops over the next few days.
He removed the doors of his plane and because of updrafts at the tower, would cut power to his 65-horsepower engine and glide about 6 feet above the tower’s top as a companion pushed the supplies out and then he would restart it, Gunderson wrote.
Among the items dropped were food, water containers, blankets, a megaphone and a medium-rare T-bone steak.
National media had quickly arrived at the tower and soon the story in some form was making headlines from New York to Los Angeles and many cities in between.
“Chutist is prisoner on precipice in sky,” the New York Daily News headline read on Oct. 3, 1941. Some articles spoke of the Goodyear blimp being sent to the rescue.
On the fourth day, Jackson climber Paul Petzoldt with experience in the Himalayas, and park ranger Harold Rapp told national monument authorities they were on the way.
Meanwhile Field and Gorrell obtained a 30-foot extension ladder and began installing it on the rock wall with the help of others.
On day five, a Sunday, spikes for use on the high cracks were obtained and two-by-fours were installed on the tower at key points. The Jackson climbers arrived, and an ice storm glazed the rocks.
At midnight under police escort Durrance, 29, and fellow Dartmouth student Merrill McLane, and Colorado friends Henry Coulter and Chappell Cranmer arrived.
The Casper Tribune-Herald and dozens of other newspapers around the country reported on George Hopkins’ rescue from the top of Devils Tower. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
The New York Daily News was among the papers across the country following George Hopkins’ plight. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
The Rapid City Daily Journal reported on George Hopkins’ predicament and Clyde Ice’s flights to help. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
The Washington Daily News in Washington, D.C., included coverage of George Hopkin’s failed attempt at the world record in its Oct. 15, 1941, edition. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)
The Rescue
On Monday, Oct. 6, at 7:30 a.m,. Durrance led the eight roped climbers up the side of the tower.
He later said with the icy conditions, the ladder and pitons that were in place were of great assistance. Those who watched Durrance were impressed with his mountaineering skills.
The team reached the top eight hours later, ate lunch with Hopkins, and at 4:45 p.m. tied a rope around him for the descent after giving him some basic instructions.
The last 200 feet of the descent was in darkness, despite trucks and a TV floodlight trying to shine up at the base of the tower. The last man was down at 8:20 p.m.
Reports state that Hopkins was hesitant to face the crowd and press. When he did, he thanked his rescuers.
“I want to say it was swell of the climbers and National Park Service for bringing me off of that tower,” Hopkins was quoted in the Rapid City Journal on Oct. 7, 1941.
All the publicity brought plenty of opportunities for Hopkins to consider.
“Numerous bids for contracts to do parachute jumping at rodeos and air fairs had been received today, and one moving picture company has made an offer,” the Rapid City Journal reported on Oct. 7, 1941.
Joyner was impressed with Hopkins and wrote in his report on the incident that he seemed well aware that he endangered the lives of his rescuers and Ice, the pilot, because of his stunt.
“I am convinced that he would have attempted any means of getting himself off the top of the tower, which we would have permitted or ordered, even though he realized that to do so might be the equivalent of committing suicide,” he wrote. “Rather than to have caused harm to come to anyone else.”
Hopkins’ time on the tower did not sway him from attempting his jumps in Rapid City.
The Rapid City paper on Oct 11., 1941, reported Hopkins planned his record-breaking 30 jumps the next day, and then on Tuesday was scheduled to be in New York to appear on the nationally broadcast “We the People” program. During the interval between his rescue and the Oct. 12 record breaking attempt, he had been in Denver, doing talks at a theater and addressing troops at Lowry Field.
On Oct. 12, the world record attempt failed.
Hopkins had problems on his third jump with a tangled main and reserve chute causing a hard landing. He still went on to do 10 more jumps before abandoning the record bid.
Endings
After the U.S. entered World War II in December, Hopkins went on to enlist in the U.S. Army and become a parachute instructor, then serve in the Office of Strategic Services, helping devise parachute drops behind enemy lines, according to Gunderson.
After the war, he married and had children, but continued flying and doing air shows until 1958. He then became an engineer working for a construction firm in California.
Brockelsby enlisted in the Army as well, serving in combat in Europe during World War II. After the war, he returned and built up his Reptile World as well as establishing other businesses in Rapid City and promoting South Dakota tourism. He was named to the South Dakota Hall of Fame for his accomplishments.
He died in 1993 and is buried in Rapid City.
Ice continued to fly and grew in notoriety in South Dakota.
He served as an advisor to Henry Ford on the Ford tri-motor airplane, and in 1940 began his successful civilian pilot training program.
One of his students was famous World War II aviator Joe Foss, who later in life was governor of the state. Ice stopped flying at age 91 and died in 1992 at 103. He, too, became a member of the South Dakota Hall of Fame.
As for Durrance, he graduated from Dartmouth College medical school and because of his efforts on K2 to save fellow climber Chappel Cranmer, the Denver Post reported Nov. 23, 2003, in Durrance’s obituary that Cranmer’s family thanked him by securing an internship for him at the Webb-Waring Institute in Denver as a pulmonary physician.
He went on to become chief of medicine, continued to climb mountains and became an expert in hybridizing flowers, particularly irises. He was chairman of the International Iris Society.
In 1994, two American Alpine Club members investigated the 1939 K2 incident and cleared Durrance’s name, blaming instead the team leader who had accused Durrance for the loss of life.
The Post obituary also reported Durrance liked to drive fast cars. A daughter spoke of their vacations from Denver to Green River, Wyoming for fishing.
“It was an eight-hour trip, but we always went over 100 mph,” she said. “It took us only four hours. We loved it.”
Hopkins, married with four daughters, returned to Devils Tower in 1967.
“It was Oct. 1 when I jumped and Oct. 6 when I got down. Dates I will never forget,” he was quoted in a remembrance article in the Casper Star-Tribune on June 4, 1972. “I was supposed to be up there only an hour and a half.”
Hopkins died in 1977 and is buried in Los Angeles.
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
