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1870- In a sculling contest held on the Monongahela River, Lottie McAlice and Maggie Lew, both 16, row 1 mile. McAlice wins the race in 18:54, winning a gold watch and a $2,000 purse.
1871 - Addie Alexander climbs the 14,256 foot Longs Peak in Colorado.
1871 - Miss Carrie A. Moore demonstrates a variety of roller skating movements at the Occidental Rink in San Francisco. Later in the same day, she exhibits her skill on a velocipede.
1871 - the Empire City Rowing Club's 10th annual regatta features a rowing match among young women on the Harlem River in New York on Sept. 25. Five women row 17-foot workboats around a 2 mile course. Rowing the Glen, Amelia Shean wins the singles race in 18:32. Elizabeth Custarce and Annie Harris win the pairs race.
1872 - Mills College in Oakland, CA establishes women's baseball teams.
1873 - 10 young women compete in a mile-long swimming contest in the Harlem River. Miss Deliliah Goboess wins the prize, a silk dress worth $175.
1874 - Mary Ewing Outerbridge of Staten Island introduces tennis to the United States. She purchases tennis equipment in Bermuda (and had trouble getting it through Customs!) and uses it to set up the first US tennis court at the Staten Island Cricket and Baseball Club that spring.
1875 - Lizzie Ihling, the niece of famed American balloonist John Wise, makes a solo flight on July 5. The skin of the bag began to rip, sending the balloon falling to earth. Lizzie was not injuried.
1875 - The "Blondes" and "Brunettes" play their first match In Springfield, IL on Sept. 11. Newspapers heralded the event as the "first game of baseball ever played in public for gate money between feminine ball-tossers."
1875 - Wellesley College opens with a gymnasium for exercising and a lake for ice skating and the first rowing program for women.
1875 - English teenager Agnes Beckwith, accomplishes a long distance swim in the Thames River from London Bridge to Greenwich, a distance of about 6 miles.
1875 - The first roller-skating rink opens in London.
1876 - Mary Marshall, 26, shocks spectators when she beats Peter VanNess in the best of three walking matches (called Pedestrians) in New York City.
1876 - Maria Speltarini crosses Niagara Falls on a tightrope in July, wearing 38-pound weights on each ankle
1876 - Ten percent of the members of the newly created Appalachin Mountain Club are women.
1876 - Nell Saunders defeated Rose Harland in the first United States women's boxing match, receiving a silver butter dish as a prize.
1877- Eliza Bennett swims across the Hudson River in August.
1877 - The first women's field hockey club is started in Surrey, England.
1878 - Woman pedestrian Ada Anderson walks 3,000 quarter-miles in 3,000 quarter hours over the course of a month in New York' Mozart Hall, kicking off a series of "lady walker" matches.
1879 - The first National Archery Championship is held, with 20 women participating.
1879 - Speed-walker Ada Anderson walks 2,700 quarter-miles in 2,700 quarter hours, as indoor Pedestrianism continues to attract attention.
1880- Balloonist Mary Meyers makes her first ascent on July 4 at Little Falls, NY before a crowd of 15,000.
1880 - Distance swimmer Agnes Beckwith treads water for 30 hours in the whale tank of the Royal Aquarium of Westminster to equal a pervious mark set by Matthew Webb.
1881 - Bell Cook of California and Emma Jewett of Minnesota toured the country, competing in a series of 20-mile horse races. On Sept. 29, in Rochester, NY's Driving Park, the two compete, with Jewwtt winning for the first time when Cook was thrown from her horse with only half a mile to go. Jewett covered the 20 miles in 45:05 using a nunber of changes of mount.
1881 - Indoor tennis is played inside the 7th Regiment Armory in New York City on Nov. 26, with 12 courts put in use for women enthusiasts and their male partners.
1881 - Edith Johnson of England sets the world's endurance indoor swimming record at 31 hours. The record holds until 1928.
1882 - The National Croquet Association is formed to revise and standarize the rules.
1882 - At the YWCA in Boston, the first athletic games for women are held.
1883 - Mrs. M. C. Howell wins her first archery title. She will win the national championship for women 17 times between 1883 and 1907.
1883 - The first baseball "Ladies Day" is held on June 16 by the NY Giants, where both escorted and unescroted women are allowed into the park for free.
1884 - Women's singles tennis competition is added to Wimbledon. Maud Watson wins in both 1884 and '85.
1885 - The Association of Collegiate Alumnae publishes a study which concludes that "...it is sufficient to say that female [college] graduates...do not seem to show, ...any marked difference in general health for the average health ... of women engaged in other kinds of work, or in fact, of women generally...", refuting the widely held belief that college study impaired a woman's physical health and ability to bear children.
1885 - Annie Oakley (Phoebe Ann Moses, 1860-1926), 25, is the sharp-shooting star of the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. She could hit a moving target while riding a galloping horse; hit a dime in mid-air; and regularly shot a cigarette from her husband's lips.
1885 - More than $20 million has been invested in roller skating rinks in almost every city around the country.
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