THE WYOMING WOMAN HOMESTEADER

Women on the Western frontier are often stereotyped into two groups—the saloon girls and prostitutes featured in countless Western films and novels, and the good women who worked as teachers, seamstresses, laundresses and/or married hardworking homesteaders and ranchers. Most of these women, no matter what they did, are lost to history. Frontierswoman Calamity Jane and shooting star Annie Oakley, whose doings often made headlines, are among the exceptions. Certainly most female emigrants, more so even than their humble male counterparts, went unremembered, though they are generally respected as a group for having braved the inevitable trials and hardships of settling a harsh and untamed land.

Among this intrepid group were female settlers and home-steaders willing