In May 1888, a host of well-dressed and polished guests crowded into the fashionable lobby of the Windsor Hotel in St. Helena, California, to catch...
Grande Dames of the West
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Chris Enss
Lights! Camera! Action!
Forget Broadway! Some of early theaters’ brightest and most accomplished entertainers performed on stages throughout Arizona. In his book Arizona on...
She Cradled Lincoln’s Head
Long before anyone ever mentioned Monica Lewinsky’s blue frock, everyone was talking about Laura Keene’s dress stained with President Abraham...
Stagecoach Mary
A well-traveled trail rests peacefully between the rich forested hillsides around the town of Cascade, Montana, and snakes 12 miles west to St....
The Scandalous Boomtown Temptress
In 1847, the western U.S. was a sleepy wilderness populated mostly by American Indians and Mexicans. The region changed virtually overnight when...
The Scandalous Boomtown Temptress
In 1847, the western U.S. was a sleepy wilderness populated mostly by American Indians and Mexicans. The region changed virtually overnight when...
Wild Times on the Alaska Frontier
Catherine Holder Spude’s latest book, Saloons, Prostitutes and Temperance in Alaska Territory, highlights the enterprising business owners, soiled...
Branded But Unbroken
The image of strong women pioneers and trailblazers of yesteryear has grown hazy in the decades since the mass migration west. For many, the type of...
Greed and Avarice on the California Frontier
Author David J. Langum Sr. focuses on the robust Western figure Mary Bennett Love in his book Quite Contrary: The Litigious Life of Mary Bennett...
The Arms of a Woman
"The only kind of heroine worth knowing about is the Western woman who hit the far trail holding a Springfield rifle and traveling with her kids and...
Wild Women of the West
The great female shortage, that was one of the dominating, formative and frustrating facts of the early West. In 1849, for example, only...
Texas Dames
In Texas, everything is bigger—even the accomplishments of the Lone Star State’s women. The collection of biographies contained in Carmen...