Friday, May 1, 1931, front page: A runaway horse

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Old Days Return, Runaway Horse Startles Tucson

The hitching posts were taken away from the downtown district of Tucson too soon.

Some years ago a person with civic pride counted 26 of these on Congress street, and it hurt his pride, so they were cut down after he had told enough people about it to get them interested. And now look what happened! A horse, a regular four-legged horse, ran away because there was no place in Tucson to hitch him. He was attached to a vegetable wagon and parked in an alley north of Tenth street. It is not known what started him running. Some say the driver forgot to shut off the motor. Others say he was left standing in high gear without the emergency brake.

At any rate, downtown Tucson was treated to an old-fashioned runaway, just like it saw with great frequency 25 years ago when the first automobiles were running away, too, because the drivers hollered "whoa" at them instead of going into neutral and applying the brakes. The runaway dashed through several blocks before it finally captured itself by running into a wiring post ─ not a hitching post.