![]() ![]() Perhaps encouraged by Suffragettes talk of women’s independence, women began to consider this opportunity to own their own property. The Homestead Act gave any 21 year old head-of-household the right to homestead land. Generally we picture homesteaders in family groups, but historians estimate that about 12% of homesteaders in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, North and South Dakota, and Utah were single women. But, among the varied crowd of women who moved west, there’s one group this is seldom noticed, let alone appreciated, the single woman homesteader. Or maybe you remember the dramatic figures like Sacajewea or Calamity Jane. ![]() ![]() Thanks to the movies and pulp westerns, when you think of western women often it is the stereotypes that come to mind: the saint-in-the-sunbonnet, the soiled dove, the schoolmarm, the pretty rancher’s daughter. (Slightly different versions of this essay appeared in The Denver Post, April 8,2007, High Country News,Īpand in the syndicated column Writers on the Range.) ![]()
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