The Women Who Won the West (a few of them at least!)

Among other things, March is Women's History Month, so this seems a good time to highlight some of the excellent tales of women in the American west.

There have been many good non-fiction books written detailing the contributions of women in the settling of the west. A good place to start might be with some of these titles:

By Grit & Grace: eleven women who shaped the American West

Best of Covered Wagon Women

Army Wives of the American Frontier: living by the bugles

African American Women of the Old West

The Doctor Wore Petticoats: women physicians of the Old West

Texas Women on the Cattle Trails

 If you like to read about women in the American west, but also want a good story, you might try these titles.

The All-True Travels & Adventures of Lidie Newton by Janes Smiley.

Against All Odds: the Lucy Scott Mitchum story by Barbara Riefe

Doc Holliday's Woman by Jane Candida Coleman

Walking West by Noelle Sickels

A Lady Follows by Holly Newman

Buffalo Girls by Larry McMurtry

Finally, there are also numerous works both in fiction and non-fiction about individual women, both famous and infamous, who carved a place for themselves on the wild frontiers of the American west.

Annie Oakley
Belle Starr
Calamity Jane
Cynthia Ann Parker

(I make no pretense that this is any sort of a complete list of interesting women of the American west. By all means feel free to search for your own favorite in our catalog. Even if we do not have the title you want in our system, we can probably borrow it from some other library around the country.)