A
Dee Brown - The Gentle Tamers: Women of the Old Wild West
Great anecdotal chapters on the various types of females in the West. Also lots of information about the growth of the women's rights movement in Wyoming in the late 1880s.

C
Agnes Cleaveland - Life for a Lady
Memoirs of a young girl growing up on the late 1800s New Mexico frontier.

Elizabeth Corey - Bachelor Bess: The Homesteading Letters
of Elizabeth Corey, 1909-1919
In the early 1900s a 21-year-old Iowa woman traveled to South Dakota to claim a homestead. This book contains ten years of her letters back to her family describing her "own continuing adventure story."

D
Harry Sinclair Drago - Notorious Ladies of the Frontier
Details the history and myths of the West's "notorious ladies", prostitutes, madams, gamblers, adventuresses and cattle rustlers, from old mining towns to the big cities of Denver and San Francisco.

H
Cecelia Hennel Hendricks - Letters from Honeyhill: A Women's View of Homesteading, 1914-1931
Seventeen years of letters from Cecelia Hennel Hendricks in Wyoming to her family back in Indiana. She came to Wyoming as a new bride in 1914 and helped make the Shoshone Valley blossom on Honeyhill Farm.

K
Deanna Kawatski - Wilderness Mother
Raising her family in the wilderness of northwestern British Columbia without electricity or running water sounds like a mother's story from the pioneer days, but Deanna Kaawatski did this in the 1990s.

L
Fred Lockley - Conversations with Pioneer Women
Short interviews from the collection of Oregon newspaperman Fred Lockley. During the late 1800s he conducted over 10,000 interviews and this book has some of the ones with the pioneer women of that state.

Cathy Luchetti - Courtship, Love and Marriage in the American Frontier
A glimpse at America's romantic past through photographs, diaries and journals 1715-1915." Great collection of diary excerpts and photos.

Cathy Luchetti - Home on the Range: A Culinary History of the American West
Frontier recipes and memories from the pioneers of the early west (1800-1915)." Great photographs.

P
Linda S. Peavy - The Gold Rush Widows of Little Falls: A Story Drawn from the Letters of Pamela and James Fergus
In the 1850s many of the wives of Little Falls, Minnesota became "Gold Rush Widows" when their husbands left for the gold fields of the West. The women who remained behind faced floods, Indians and a failing economy. The book is based on the Fergus family letters.

R
Glenda Riley - Frontierswomen, The Iowa Experience
Study of women's lives on the Iowa frontier that debunks the myths and stereotypes of the passive, long-suffering little women. Uses excerpts from women's diaries and letters.

Glenda Riley - The Life and Legend of Annie Oakley
Annie Oakley was sharpshooter and an exhibition star, but she always maintained the image and life of a proper Victorian lady. This scholarly look at her life also examines the American society of the time.

Joyce Gibson Roach - The Cowgirls
How women on the cattle frontier took their place as equal partners with men is an important chapter in the history and folklore of the West." Traces cowgirls from the 1800s through the 1940s, from the true ranch women to the Wild West Show cowgirls.

Vesta Robbins - Coward Soul
Life of Susan Stever, who as a 16 year old bride came from Virginia to Iowa to face tornadoes, floods, Indians, panthers and other hardships. Written by her granddaughter.

Mary Canaga Rowland - As Long as Life: The Memoirs of a Frontier
Woman Doctor, Mary Canaga Rowland
Memoirs written by one of the first women doctors in the U.S. during the beginning of the 20th century. She practiced for 50 years in the western
states, continuing after her husband, also a doctor, was murdered.

S
Lillian Schlissel - Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey
Diaries of "ordinary women who were caught up in the momentous event of history", the traveling of the Overland Trail.

Elinore Stewart - Letters of a Woman Homesteader
In 1909 a young widow left Denver to homestead on Wyoming. Her letters to her former employer detail her life and all the characters who surround her.

Joanna L. Stratton - Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier
The author found 800 memoirs solicited by her great grandmother from Kansas pioneer women and created this book.

T
(Time Life Books)
The Women
A Time Life book on the women of the West, with great photographs.

W
(Western Writers of America)
The Women Who Made the West
The life stories of 18 lesser-known, but no less colorful, heroines of the Old West.

(Women in the West Series)
Much to be Done: Women Settlers on the Mining and Ranching Frontier
The voices of nineteen women who helped settle the West and Southwest, drawn from their letters, diaries and memoirs.

Y
Carrie Young - Nothing to Do But Stay
Written by her daughter, this is the story of Carrine Gafkjen, who in the early 1900s at the age of 25 homesteaded in western North Dakota. By the age
of 30, she had doubled her property and then chose to marry and have
six children.