101 Years Ago This Month, Katherine Slaughterback Became Colorado’s Rattlesnake Kate

Most people in Colorado know the story of Alferd Packer, the prospector convicted of cannibalism.

Far fewer know about the woman who took on more than 100 rattlesnakes in a single afternoon and won.

Keep scrolling to learn about Colorado’s legendary Rattlesnake Kate.

Colorado’s Rattlesnake Kate’s Background

Katherine McHale Slaughterback was born on July 25, 1893, in a cabin near Longmont. She was a tough, independent homesteader on the plains who married and divorced six times, but it was one afternoon in 1925 that made her a Colorado legend.

On October 28, 1925, Slaughterback and her 3-year-old son, Ernie, were riding their horse toward a lake near their farm outside Hudson, in Weld County. They’d heard hunters and hoped to find a few ducks left behind. Instead, they rode right into a mass of migrating rattlesnakes.

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Afraid the snakes would spook the horse and throw Ernie, she shot every rattler she could with her .22 rifle. When she ran out of bullets, she yanked a sign out of the ground and clubbed the rest to death.

By her own estimate, the fight lasted about two hours and left roughly 140 rattlesnakes dead. Historians think the story probably grew a little in the retelling, but the photos and the snakeskins back up the core of it.

The Aftermath of Colorado’s Rattlesnake Kate’s Ordeal

Slaughterback skinned the snakes and used 53 of them to make a flapper-style dress, complete with matching shoes and a necklace made of rattles.

She kept the nickname Rattlesnake Kate for the rest of her life, and even raised rattlesnakes and sold their skins and venom. The dress is still on display at the Greeley History Museum.

Slaughterback donated her famous dress to the Greeley museum just weeks before she died on October 6, 1969. She’s buried in Platteville, under a headstone that reads simply “Rattlesnake Kate.”

Her story lives on in other ways, too, including a folk opera by Colorado cellist and former Lumineers member Neyla Pekarek.