wild women

The light from a spectacular full moon spilled into the windows of the parlor at the Strentzel Ranch near the town of Martinez in the Alhambra Valley in California.  The room was filled to overflowing with well-dressed guests, owners, and operators of farms in the area and their wives and family.  All eyes were on...

Yosemite’s Half Dome, the hooded monk in stone, brooding over its eastern end, rises thousands of feet from the ground below, so high that its summit is wreathed in clouds.  In October 1876, three men scaled the mountain face slowly working their way to the top.  All were dressed in woolen caps and trousers, thick...

Twenty-seven-year-old Clare Hodges gently urged her chestnut roan through a thicket of trees and brush.  The horse’s hooves barely made a sound as it walked over a thick carpet of pine needles and maple leaves.  Bright streams of sunlight filtered through the branches of sequoias and spilled onto the ground with brilliant intensity.  A light...

A hot July breeze skidded across the banks of the Green River south of Fort Bridger, Wyoming.  The clear water flowed swiftly past a grove of trees, waving with the wind.  The grass on both sides of the river was spangled with flowers. Elizabeth Graves, a handsome woman in her late 40s, was decorating a...

It was almost eight in the morning on June 3, 1895, when Jennie Freeman and Belle Black rode into the quiet, unassuming town of Fairview, Oklahoma.  The women, who would later be described by the people they robbed as “neither young, fair, nor dashing”, steered their rides toward a large, brick building that was a...

When twenty four-year old Mildred Douglas rode a steer in the Garden City, Kansas, rodeo in 1919, it was a big deal.  No woman had ever ridden a steer in competition before.  But Douglas was no ordinary woman.  Born in Philadelphia on August 21, 1895, Mildred knew at the age of seven what she wanted...

Bronc busting champion Kitty Wilkes won her first title at the Wild West Celebration Rodeo in Miles City, Montana, in 1916.  The seventeen-year-old, New York native’s straightforwardness and untamed physical daring gave fans the impression she was born and bred into the rugged life of a Wyoming ranch. Few would have guessed she was new to...

(1894-1986) The stylish lobby of the Texas Hotel in Fort Worth was a bustle of activity on Saturday, March 11, 1922.  Well-dressed patrons were arriving and departing.  A string quartet in the corner of the massive entryway serenaded white-haired, prosperous looking gentlemen and their stocky, bejeweled wives being escorted to their rooms by attentive bellboys. ...