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Driving the Wyoming Suffragette Trail By Elaine Masters
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f ever we needed wide-open spaces, rodeo thrills, and a beautiful drive, it’s now. Wyoming has all that but something else propelled my four-day road trip a few falls back. I was on the trail of the United States’ Suffragette Movement. Wyoming was a pivotal frontier for women in the United States. In the late 1800’s, the territory was in a race for statehood and needed more settlers quickly. A scheme was hatched and the day after the passage of the Suffrage Act, a Cheyenne newspaper commented,” …We now expect quite an immigration of ladies to Wyoming…We say, come on!” However, few men actually expected women to get involved in governing, let alone vote. However, women organized quickly and disproved that notion. After being the backbone of the pioneer surge as tireless homemakers, feeding hungry workers, and toiling alongside men hammerto-hammer, they demanded more recognized roles in the territorial government. Most notably, Esther Morris, took over several businesses in South Pass when her undisciplined, to put it mildly, husband was jailed. By the end of 1870, Justice Esther Morris was, “Gaveling Wyoming rowdies into the calaboose.” Other women became pioneering jury members in Cheyenne and Laramie; more aspired to become elected public officials. Luckily for the state, and the rest of the country, an effort to repeal the Suffrage Bill in 1871 failed passage in the all-male legislature by one vote. There was no turning back.
Cheyenne Restoration I ‘set up camp’ at the Little America Hotel and headed over to the State Capitol building. It proudly covers acres in the middle of town and has just reopened to the public after an extensive, expensive, and gorgeous renovation. Over 130 years ago the Capitol building’s architects relied on wood and stone, paint, and carving. Time left its mark, and with a long list of repairs the complicated expansion and restoration began years ago. Now, the Capitol building has reopened. How I wish to have seen the unveiling of the immense statue of Esther Morris, the state’s first woman justice, in her new place of honor. If you visit,
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