Hazel Bess Laugenour (c. 1891–1960) was an undergraduate at the University of California at Berkeley in literature when she became the first woman to swim across the Golden Gate Strait, which separates the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco Bay on August 19, 1911. Laugenour capitalized on her international fame by making several movies (one of which is in the collection of the National Film Archives) and touring the country to promote the movies with an elaborate presentation which included a very large transparent swimming tank, complete with pump motor to approximate tidal conditions. As she was preparing to swim The English Channel, World War I broke out, ending that ambition. She married Timothy Edmund Fogg (also of the University of California at Berkeley in Mining Engineering and a Sigma Chi) and had a daughter, Joan Fogg. Laugenour traced her family's history back to The Black Forest, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in Colonial times. References Female long-distance swimmers 1890s births 1960 deaths Vaudeville performers