Chris Enss

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 fierce wind filled with alkali dust blew past Silas Toles, a Labette County, Kansas farmer, as he made his way to his neighbor’s seemingly vacant home.  Three other farmers followed tentatively behind him.  An endless prairie stretched out on either side of the weather-beaten building.  A hungry calf languished in a nearby fenced enclosure...

As Ella “Kate” Watson sashayed down the crude staircase of the Rawlins, Wyoming saloon and brothel where she worked she inspected the potential customers in the smoke-filled bar.  Eager cowboys eyed her hourglass form as she brushed by them.  They sniffed the air after her, breathing in the scent of jasmine she left behind.  Kate...

Ellis Meredith was the daughter of pioneers. Born in Montana Territory, in 1865, she was the daughter of Emily R. Meredith, a well-known advocate for woman suffrage, and Frederick Allison, a journalist. The family had been drawn to the gold-rush boomtown and territorial capital of Bannack Montana, living there for a couple of years before...

Twenty-three-year-old Marie Gibson straddled a cantankerous bronco waiting inside a chute at the Havre Stampede in Havre, Montana.  It was July 1917, and this ride would be the cowgirl’s first as a professional.  Long, black curls dangled from the wide sombrero atop her head, and she wore men’s riding breeches and a flamboyant silk shirt...

Esther Hobart Morris carefully arranged borrowed chairs and warmed borrowed teacups as she prepared for her visitors to arrive. Her tiny mountain cabin, perched at 7,500 feet of elevation in the mountains at South Pass City, Wyoming Territory, was cleaned, decorated, and full of all of the delectable morsels she could contrive for the important...

Bitterly cold snow flurries pelted the determined features of twenty-one-year-old Ethel Berry’s face as she drove her dog sled over the Chilkoot Pass in Alaska. Clad in a pair of men’s mackinaw breeches and moccasins, she cracked her whip over the team of animals hauling an enormous mound of supplies behind them. Ethel was slowly...

A hush fell over the large crowd at the rodeo arena in Salt Lake City, Utah, in July 1938 as daredevil rider Alice Sisty raced into the arena atop two English jumpers. She was standing on the backs of the animals with one foot on one horse and the other foot on the second mount,...

When twenty-four-year-old Mildred Douglas rode a steer in the Garden City, Kansas, rodeo in 1919, it was a big deal.  Never before had a woman ever ridden a steer in competition, but Douglas was no ordinary woman.  Born in Philadelphia on August 21, 1895, Mildred knew at the age of seven what she wanted to...