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A huge cloud of steam boiled out of the tremendous stack on the locomotive engine hauling a Union Pacific train up a steep grade outside Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 1888.  Among the many cars being pulled along was one belonging to the celebrated actress Lillie Langtry.  The seventy-five-foot, blue, private car named the LaLee was...

More than two dozen women adorned in black poplin skirts with matching blouses, stiff white collars and aprons and sporting sleek, shiny hair fashioned into a tidy bun, busily hurried about a Santa Fe Railroad restaurant in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1879.  The gruff, rugged cowhands who were the patrons of the establishment looked out...

Ella Lazinka was an eastern Oregon cowgirl who won the world championship cowgirl relay race at the Pendleton Round-Up in 1912.  The following year she returned to defend her crown. The cowgirls’ relay race was run over a three-day period, two miles each day, with the rider changing horses every half-mile, mounting, dismounting, unsaddling, and...

A lively, petite woman with dark hair and dark eyes coaxed a pair of blonde mares pulling a well-used buggy toward a train depot in Taylorsville, Texas.  When the vehicle reached the building, she tugged on the reins, and the horses came to a quick stop.  Nine curious men waiting on the platform and carefully...

There were many talented, female contract players at Republic Pictures.  In the mid-1940s the studio had more than a hundred-twenty actors in its’ stable of gifted individuals.  Some of those actresses became household names because of their work in front of the camera and others rose to fame as a result of their off-screen exploits. ...

Mott began to speak at religious meetings, and three years later she was accepted as a minister of the Friends. She joined the Hicksite (Liberal) branch of the Society of Friends when a rift occurred in the 1820s, and in that decade, she began to travel about the country lecturing on religion and questions of...

In the history of the Indians, she and Pocahontas will be the principal female characters, and her singular devotion to her race will no doubt be chronicled as an illustration of the better traits of the Indian character.  —San Francisco Call, January 1885 The Bannock War and the Army Territorial Enterprise, June 5, 1878:  We...

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...

The green, silk robe shimmered in the light of the dressing room.  Adjusting the neckline, Lillian Russell glanced into the mirror and considered the interviewer’s question about beauties never appreciating their good looks.  “I think they do,” she countered.  “They are glad to have it, as they are grateful for any other gift.  I am...