The NY Times had a fascinating article yesterday on the history of northern Wyoming. In the early 1900s, there was a movement to lop off the top half of the state and join forces with a part of Montana and South Dakota to form a separate state: Absaroka. While not specifically a women's history, the story does feature a few tough ladies:
“It was 90 miles of dirt road to the county seat,” said Helen Graham, who was a teenager in 1930s South Dakota, a daughter of struggling homesteaders.And a modern-day ranch woman:
Jill Havert stirred 40 eggs for the guests and crew in a cast-iron pot as the gas burners hissed under the canvas and the creek rippled outside. Ms. Havert, a 21-year-old nursing student at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, is being “initiated,” as she put it, into the Kerns family. Her boyfriend, Tyler Kerns, 20, is one of Ken Kerns’s grandchildren and a junior in architectural engineering at the university. He has been making cattle drives since childhood; she was on her first, and dark-before-dawn breakfast duty was part of the drill.
“This is a sink-or-swim family,” Ms. Havert said. “But I’m holding my own.”
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