Jackson Town Council

JACKSON HOLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY AND MUSEUM Jackson was served by an all-female town council from 1920-23. From left: Mae Deloney, Rose Crabtree, Mayor Grace Miller, Faustina Haight and Genevieve Van Vleck.

A NEED FOR TOWN LEADERS

In Jackson’s early days, women transformed their town, made history

MANDY LASKY

For the Star-Tribune

As the 1920s began, life in the young frontier town of Jackson was changing fast.

For one thing, it had recently been designated a county seat. The small town, which had been incorporated only a few years earlier, was intended to become the heart of this new community in the West.

That meant people were starting to sell their homesteads and ranches and move into town — the early days of a shift toward a more commercial economy.

Still, though, Jackson was isolated. It had no railroad, so supplies were hard to come by. In this rough-and-tumble time of transition, self-reliance could be the difference between success and failure.

“1920s Jackson was a hard place to survive in,” said Morgan Jaouen, executive director of the Jackson Hole Historical Society and Museum.

Civic leadership was not yet a priority for the settlers, but as more and more people began to call Jackson home, the town experienced the growing pains that often plague fledgling settlements. Livability, including infrastructure, had become a priority, Jaouen said.

As the town grew, so did its need for leaders who would guide it along its new path. But the men of Jackson were still occupied mostly with simple survival, Jaouen said. That meant the new leadership would have to come from someone else, someone who wanted to see change and had the time and ambition to make it happen.

It would have to come from women. • • •

The right crop of women to lead Jackson wasn’t hard to find. Everyone in town knew everyone else, Jaouen said.

“These were outspoken, respected women who were seen as partners with their husbands,” she explained.

Most important, they ran on a platform people identified with — one that centered on transforming the frontier town into a livable community. They wanted to collect overdue taxes; focus on water, sewer and electricity services; and improve roads. They hoped to create a place where they and future families would want to live.

“They had clear ideas of things they wanted to do to improve everyday life for people here,” said Natalia Macker, chairwoman of the Teton County Board of County Commissioners and currently its only female member. “They had practical experience, and they saw problems that had solutions.”

The platform was popular, and the women faced little resistance. One candidate, Grace Miller, beat her male opponent with 56 votes to 28, Jaouen said. Another woman defeated her own husband, according to a news article from 1922 provided by the Jackson Hole Historical Society and Museum. The article was published in The Delineator, an American women’s magazine.

This made Jackson one of the first towns in the U.S. to be governed entirely by women.

“We simply tried to work together,” the article quotes Miller, who served as mayor, saying. “We put into practise the same thrifty principles we exercise in our own homes. We wanted a clean, wellkept progressive town in which to raise our families. What is good government but a breathing-place for good citizenship?”

Once the women were in office, they followed through on their promises, addressing garbage disposal, culverts, overdue taxes and the need for a town cemetery, according to the article.

They also appointed other Jackson women to leadership positions. One of these was Pearl Williams, the town marshal. Williams, who was in her early 20s when she was appointed, became one of the first female town marshals in the nation.

These women set Jackson on an important and lasting path.

“They certainly created this sense of civic duty and community engagement that’s been strong in Jackson,” Jaouen said. “People here are really involved and take pride in being part of decisions.”

But in another sense, this milestone town council didn’t start a trend at all.

“This happened in 1920, but it wasn’t until the end of the 20th century that Jackson once again elected female leaders in town council or the county commission, and we did not see another female mayor until Jeanne Jackson from 2001 to 2002,” Jaouen said. “We were not immune from national trends. But we are starting to see that trend change in Jackson and in Wyoming.”

She noted that the town had seen several strong female leaders over the last decade. Still, she said, “there’s still

disease research, O’Toole said. And she built a program.

The university agreed to allow her to do any wildlife workups for Game and Fish that she wanted and the department wouldn’t be charged. What that meant was that she worked nonstop, but she also had a front-row seat to anything strange in the wildlife world.

“There was a constant stream of ‘This looks kind of weird. Beth, will you look at it?’” O’Toole said. “One time I said, ‘Beth, don’t you get sick and tired of dealing with all this rotten wildlife stuff?’ And she said ‘No, it’s like Christmas.”

She performed full necropsies on bison by herself. She opened grizzly bears that had been poached and buried and examined them for clues. She was as comfortable staring at slides in a microscope for hours as she was examining animals in the field or speaking in front of international politicians.

The team she made with her husband only increased their influence on the wildlife disease world, said Edwards, a wildlife disease specialist with Game and Fish.

It was Thorne who made the decision to round up the last of the black-footed ferrets and bring them in for captive breeding. And it was Williams who identified the best canine distemper vaccine to use to ensure they could survive in the wild.

The couple was also largely responsible for keeping game farms out of Wyoming. They worried that allowing captive breeding of wildlife and bringing in wildlife from other places would only increase the spread of disease.

She worked extensively on brucellosis – a disease that causes elk, bison and cattle to abort their fetuses, and chytrid, a deadly fungus found on the endangered Wyoming toad.

“As an academic you find one disease and find one aspect and you mine it. You don’t become a generalist, and that was unusual about Beth,” O’Toole said. “She would look into anything.”

• • •

To those who knew Williams best – or really knew her at all – it wasn’t her brilliance that struck them so much as her brilliance coupled with patience, a willingness to mentor and a desire to collaborate with anyone who could help solve wildlife diseases.

When she arrived at UW, she created an externship program that brought graduate students from around the country to Wyoming for a short time to study, participate in field work and gain experience.

Cook, the Texas wildlife health professor, started in one of Williams’ externships and later returned to do his PhD under her.

“It set the stage for my entire life,” said Cook, who recently testified before Congress about wildlife diseases. “I can’t imagine where I would have been if I hadn’t gotten to know her and gotten to work with her.”

That is Williams’ legacy, said Shelli Dubay, a wildlife professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

Results from her work like discovering CWD and helping save the blackfooted ferret will live on. But even more than that are the multitude of students Williams sent out into the world who are making their own discoveries and advancing wildlife disease research. Even the international Wildlife Disease Association named its lifetime achievement award after Williams and Thorne.

Dubay still thinks of Williams when she teaches her students. She remembers to approach everyone with friendliness and civility, and always put science first.

“You would walk into her office, and she had a characteristic way of spinning around in her chair and look at you with a big smile on her face. She always had her face in a microscope. She was always looking at slides,” Dubay said. “But she would never say no. She would always have time. She was so welcoming.”

It’s not lost on Dubay that Williams operated gracefully in a male-dominated space. Williams was beautiful, she said, with long, brown hair and a playfulness that showed when she felt relaxed and at ease. She didn’t demand professional respect, she earned it.

Recently, as Dubay talked to her science-minded, 10-year old daughter about the upcoming Wildlife Disease Association’s annual conference in Spain, she told her about Williams, about the advances she made in science, the way she brought people together and the power of having a female mentor and role model. Her daughter was in awe.

That’s how one of the best wildlife disease researchers in the state will live on, through students like Dubay, Cook, Edwards and dozens if not hundreds of others. Williams exemplified how science should be accomplished, and now those lessons are being passed on to their students and their children, continuing to progress wildlife disease research around the globe.

From 13

young readers in her childhood memories, three children, six grandchildren, children she’s taught and met — and even dogs. She writes some of her picture books with her daughter, Emily.

Her many awards include a National Humanities Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities as well as the American Library Association’s Notable Children’s Book award, according to the NEH website. Her screenwriting credits include the “Sarah, Plain and Tall,” TV movie and sequels starring Glenn Close and Christopher Walken.

Her books feature many admirable girls and women among her lead characters.

“I know, they’re all pretty strong aren’t they? And they make decisions and they’re not afraid. There’s no fear there. I hadn’t realized that, but thank

Jackson

From 14 a lot of work to be done toward equal representation.”

Macker agreed. This town council’s success was inspirational, she said, “but I think we still have things to learn” about diversity in representation. • • •

The numbers support their assessment. Only 16 percent of the seats in the Wyoming Legislature and only 20 percent of all positions on the county commissions of the state’s five most populous counties are held by women. The Wyoming County Commissioners’ Association recently honored Macker as county commissioner of the year. She was the first woman to receive the recognition.

“It’s not a place women have always seen themselves,” Macker said.

She noted that for some women, the barriers to holding political office may be economic. In many cases, women are the primary caregiver for their families, which makes it difficult for them to be in Cheyenne for two months for the legislative session. She also mentioned the state’s gender wage gap and the economic inequality it creates as obstacles in achieving more diverse representation. you for saying that, because I would hate to go out of this life without having done that in some way or other.”

Many of her characters experience difficulties like loss of parent and other loved ones or changes like a first love — like the main characters in “Dream Within a Dream,” which was released in May and named by Publishers Weekly one of the 10 best books of 2019 for middle-grade readers.

Last week, the author and baseball fan finished a novel in which a little girl learns to pitch the knuckleball, to her father’s surprise.

“So I think children can do anything, if they’re given the opportunities, that’s what I’d like to say,” MacLachlan said.

She hopes children find something in common with her characters, and finds they often do.

“I think what I’m trying to do is reflect interesting and strong children,

like the children that I’m writing for.”

“It doesn’t have simple solutions, but it’s worth trying to address,” Macker said.

From her perspective, a more diverse group of voices means we have access to a greater understanding of the issues and the full impact of policies. Without diverse representation of all kinds, she said, “we’re missing out on more voices lending solutions to the challenges we face.”

Finding solutions to everyday challenges is also at the heart of the 1922 news article.

“What the women have done to the town is worth telling, because it proves that women can bring into practical politics common sense and business ability,” Genevieve Parkhurst wrote.

Enthusiasm for women in leadership roles is growing again in the state, according to Macker. She mentioned that several organizations are working in the state to increase representation and inclusion, such as the Wyoming Women’s Foundation, which focuses on topics like economic parity, as well as the Wyoming Women’s Legislative Caucus, which aims to prepare women to run for office.

“Wyoming has been a leader with women’s representation in government, and I think we can be again because of the scope and scale of our state,” Macker said. “It has created opportunities for women to lead.”