wild women of the west

A strong gust of wind blew a pair of tumbleweeds into the path of a team of horses hitched to a wagon.  It spooked the animals, and they reared and bucked and then bolted.  The gray-haired women holding the reins of the team screamed.  The wagon pitched and swayed as the horses jerked it around. ...

The mesmerized onlookers lining the streets in Denver, Colorado, in 1913 were treated to a grand wild west show entourage.  The crowd cheered as showman Buffalo Bill Cody proudly led his cast and crew down the thoroughfare toward the parade field where they would be performing.  The lengthy caravan consisted of 181 horses, eighteen buffalo...

Between 1954 and 1957, actress Gail Davis portrayed famous sharpshooter Annie Oakley in the television series of the same name.  Known as the “Queen of the Wild Frontier,” Davis was only five foot two and the pigtails she wore in the show were her own.  Her father was a surgeon in McGehee, Arkansas, which was...

Mrs. Frank “Tobey” Riddle, better known as Winema, was a mediator for the Modoc people, other Indian tribes in the area of Klamath Lake, Oregon, and the United States Army in early 1878.  With her skills she was able to negotiate treaties that kept the land of her ancestors in peace.  Whenever that peace was...

On June 15, 1853, a vivacious, petite woman stepped cheerfully off a stagecoach in Nevada City, California, dressed with all the style of Princess Eugenia of Sweden and Norway.  As she strolled into the National Hotel with her dainty steps and her bustle looping back and forth, she made a decision to changer her name...

Say the name Annie Oakley and the image of a young woman who could shoot targets out of the sky without a miss and rode across the frontier with Wild West showman Buffalo Bill Cody comes to mind. Annie Oakley was a champion rifle shot and did perform alongside well-known riders, ropers, and Indian chiefs...

The most influential woman at Republic Pictures from the early 1940s to the studio’s demise in the early 1960s, was Vera Hruba.  Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on July 12, 1919, the blonde beauty caught Republic Picture’s president Herbert Yates’ attention in 1939 when she toured the United States with an ice-skating show called Ice Vanities. ...

In many of the films actress Anne Jeffreys made for motion picture studios like Republic Pictures she either played a cowgirl or a damsel in perilous situations.  Neither the studio nor the performer could imagine how much those movies would affect the lives of young, ticket buyers.  A letter from a fan written to Republic Pictures in...