wild women of the west

The polite but enthusiastic applause from 40,000 Londoners brought a huge smile to fifteen-year-old Lillian Smith’s face. Her performance before England’s Queen Victoria was the highlight of her early time with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. It was the fiftieth anniversary of the queen’s rule, and the stands were filled with royalty from across Europe....

Night had fallen over Tombstone, Arizona, and every restless and rowdy character in the vicinity of the southwestern town had poured into the saloons and gambling dens to while away the hours until dawn arrived. The doorways of the numerous taverns that lined Allen Street were illuminated with smoky kerosene torches. Signs that hung over...

When the five-reel western drama A Knight of the Range premiered in early 1916, critics praised silent film cowboy and cowgirl actors Harry D. Carey and Olive Fuller Golden performances. Audiences were dazzled by the equestrian feats never-before seen in a motion picture. “Stunts that are inconceivable of execution are performed before the all-seeing eye...

The crew and passengers aboard the steamship the City of Columbia stood huddled together on the flooded deck of the vessel. Night was all around them and an awful moment of peril and suspense hung in the wet air. A perfect storm had overtaken the steamer and raging winds had driven her into a mass...

Twenty-nine-year-old Florence LaDue laid on her back in the middle of a rodeo arena in Alberta, Canada, twirling a lasso. It was July 1910 and the crowd in the stands watching her work were cheering and whistling. The trick, the petite cowgirl was preparing to do was to throw a wide loop over a rider...

Texas Guinan (Mary Louise Cecelia Guinan) was a popular cowgirl star from 1918-1923, who grew up on a ranch near Waco, Texas. Before graduating from high school, she received a scholarship from the Chicago Conservatory of Music. After she acquired a degree in music and art, she moved to Denver and helped her father on...

Thirty-two-year-old Enid Justin drove her Model T Ford into the small town of Jacksboro, Texas, in early 1926, determined to sell her quality, handmade cowboy boots to the mercantile owners there. As the head of the newly formed Nocona Boot Company, the tenacious woman knew what needed to be done to make her brand a...

A team of bald face horses pulling a buckboard wagon galloped wildly along a dirt road heading toward the Santa Ynez Mountains, twenty miles outside of Santa Barbara. The driver, a pudgy man wearing a worried expression, urged the animals along. Dr. Harriet Belcher, a distinguished looking, forty-year-old woman with dark hair and dark eyes,...