Women in the Wild West: The Other Frontier

Think of the figures of the Wild West of the 1800s: the cowboys, the gunslingers, the fearless outlaws, the scouts and hunters.

Now picture them as women.

Depictions of the Wild West in movies, books, comics, and elsewhere have led many to believe women out west were limited to accompanying their families on the trail and establishing homesteads. But the scope of women’s roles during this time expanded alongside the boundaries of the United States. Women were everything from schoolteachers to sharpshooters, homemakers to hotel keepers, and their contributions during this period of time left a mark.

Out with the Old, In with the New

Westward Expansion refers to the period from 1801 to 1861, during which people began pushing west. This push was fueled by the belief known as “manifest destiny.” This was the belief that American settlers were destined to expand across the continent, promising work and a better life. In order to fulfill this promise, federal legislation removed Indigenous people from their land to provide land to settlers. Women settlers during this period raised families and maintained their households by preparing food, washing clothes and bedding, nursing sick family members, and tending animals. For those who moved westward, this all took place with the added complications and hazards of life on the pioneer trails. And once they reached their destination, they had to adapt to a new environment and overcome the challenges of creating a home on the frontier.

However, not every woman who traveled west during this time was a wife and/or mother, and the West proved to be a new frontier in more ways than one. Women in the established eastern part of the country were expected to conform to culturally predetermined roles and take on the responsibilities of keeping house and raising children. If they did enter the workforce, they became teachers or nurses. The West, on the other hand, was a new and untamed place. With fewer laws and a society that was far less strict, many women on the frontier had more freedom. In many places, women had the right to vote, divorce laws were more lax, and in some cases, women could own their own property. With increased freedom came more opportunities.

Filling a Gap

Men largely outnumbered women on the frontier, and there was no shortage of single men or men whose families had stayed home. Many women capitalized on this. They found it was possible to make money using the skills they had been taught for maintaining households. Because there were fewer women in the early days of the West, skills such as washing, sewing, mending clothes, running a boarding house, and cooking became very valuable. Luzena Wilson, who went west with her husband during the Gold Rush, built an outdoor restaurant while her husband was mining one day. By the time he returned from work, she had 20 miners sitting at a table, paying a dollar each for a meal. She was so successful that she eventually opened her own hotel and was able to lend money to others. Baking proved to be a valuable skill as well, since most male miners had neither the skill nor the time to produce their own baked goods. Mary Jane Caples was able to make a living selling her baking. She didn’t have a stove, so she baked pies in pots over a fire and charged over a dollar for each one. At times, she made and sold a hundred pies in a single day.

Formerly enslaved women also sought opportunity on the frontier. In Ravine, California, in 1854, Clara Brown, a freed woman from Kentucky, supported herself by doing laundry for miners. Brown made $15 to $20 a week washing clothes and was eventually able to save $10,000 to help other freed people find work. Perhaps one of the most well-known figures, though, was Lucretia Marshbanks, who was freed in the Civil War and later moved to Deadwood, South Dakota. She began as a kitchen manager, and though she went on to become a hotel owner and ranch owner, she was known as one of the most skilled cooks in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Marshbanks once made a mincemeat pie so divine that the man who ate it later bought her a silk dress the moment he struck gold. Her mark on the region persevered into the 21st century — she served as the inspiration for a character on HBO’s Deadwood.

Breaking the Mold

But a more lax society and less governance meant women in the West also seized opportunities to make a living for themselves outside of their domestic skills. Due to a high demand for entertainment among male frontiersmen, many women made a living as musicians, dancers, and actresses. Some even owned their own saloons and music halls. “Poker” Alice Tubbs moved to Colorado with her husband who worked in the mines, though she later made a living through even less conventional means. When her husband was killed in an explosion, she became a professional gambler and worked as a dealer in gambling houses.

Furthermore, women didn’t shy away from occupations that had typically been reserved for men due to the dangerous nature of the jobs. By the 1860s, women made up only 19 percent of prospectors; that didn’t stop women like Lillian Malcolm, who left the Broadway stage to become a gold prospector in Alaska. In 1898, she made the perilous decision to drive her own sled dog team to chase the Klondike gold rush, found herself in the freezing water of the Bering Strait at least once, and nearly starved while in remote regions of Alaska. Malcolm stuck with it despite the inherent risks, and she made a lasting career from prospecting, traveling from Alaska to Nevada to Mexico.

In 1895, Mary Fields, who had been born into slavery in Tennessee, was hired by the U.S. Postal Service to drive a stagecoach. Though women worked for the Postal Service as managers and clerks at the time, very few worked as mail carriers. The first female mail carrier, Sarah Black, was hired in Maryland in 1845, but even as of the 1890s, women were still petitioning to be allowed to work as mail carriers more widely. Fields was hired at the age of 60, a fact all the more astonishing considering driving a stagecoach on the frontier came with additional risks of treacherous terrain, bandits, and more. At six feet tall, though, Fields was capable of taking care of herself. She was always armed with a rifle and a revolver to protect herself and her cargo on the road, but she was known for being able to knock out a man with a single punch. According to her obituary, “she broke more noses than any other woman in Central Montana.”

A Lasting Legacy

Though women have rarely been at the forefront of people’s minds when thinking of the American frontier, their impact cannot be understated. In addition to helping their families travel to and settle in the West, their contributions to the settlement of the western United States were vast and varied.

Some women even became part of the folklore of the West. Martha Jane Cannary, better known as Calamity Jane, moved to Wyoming after the death of her parents. There, she learned how to ride and shoot, going on to become a scout and trick shooter. An extraordinarily skilled marksman, Annie Oakley became one of the headline performers for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.

But whether or not their names are remembered in households across the country, the frontierswomen of the 1800s changed the landscape of the West. Additionally, they helped shift the perception of women in the United States as a whole.