“The motors of the wagon train”: meet the forgotten women who upended gender norms to win the Wild West

But the real story of life on the edge of the American frontier was far more complex. This was a vast and varied landscape of opportunity and danger, certainly, but also reinvention – something that plenty of women grasped hold of. And, as Karen Jones explains on the HistoryExtra podcast, women’s contributions – in labour, resourcefulness and resilience – were as critical to these communities’ survival as any gunslinger’s skills.

Between the early 19th century and the ‘closing’ of the frontier in 1890, women were organisers and pioneers in their own right. They endured the same hardships as men (and sometimes greater ones) while also navigating social restrictions that made their achievements all the more remarkable.

The scale and setting of the American frontier

In the earliest years of the 19th century, “the frontier” referred to the shifting borderlands between established US settlements and the vast, sparsely governed lands to the west. These territories were home to hundreds of Indigenous nations, each with their own political and cultural systems and histories.

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The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 – in which the United States bought more than 800,000 square miles of land from France – doubled the country’s size overnight. “That 1803 moment is where the frontier really begins,” notes Jones.

Over the next century, a combination of treaties, wars, forced removals, and purchases pushed US settlement across the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and the deserts of the south west, eventually reaching the Pacific coast.

But this westward expansion came at immense cost to Indigenous peoples, whose lands were seized. The story of women on the frontier unfolded within this broader context of violent colonisation and cultural clash.

The Wild West – a land of opportunity?

For many in the 19th-century eastern states, the untamed West promised reinvention. Economic hardship, lack of available farmland and the hope of a better life drove migration.

“Really, the most attractive aspect of the West for settlers was opportunity. For many people it was land, farmland. For others it was gold. For others, the promise of religious freedom,” Jones says.

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The Homestead Act of 1862 formalised this lure. The law granted 160 acres of public land to any ‘head of household’ who would live on it and improve it over five years. Crucially, the law didn’t exclude women. Widows, single women and divorced women could all file claims, a rare opportunity in an era when women’s property rights were still limited.

“One in 10 homestead claims were filed by women,” Jones notes. That amounted to thousands of women who were able to stake their independence in a very tangible way.

Women on the move

While some women travelled west alone, most went with families or in organised groups. Often, the decision to leave was made by fathers or husbands, yet the demands of the journey made women indispensable.

The overland trip could take four to six months, following routes like the Oregon Trail or Santa Fe Trail. Wagon trains were mobile villages, requiring constant and concerted coordination and labour. But these wagon trains wouldn’t have made it far without women.

“They are the motors of the whole thing,” explains Jones. Though it would most often have been men determining the critical decisions about direction and destination, the actual movement of the wagons along the trails depended on the work of women.

“Women keep the whole thing running. They cook, they look after the kids. Effectively, they manage the whole running of the wagon train,” says Jones.

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Cooking wasn’t just throwing ingredients in a pan, either. It was an involved process, requiring the gathering of fuel, hauling water and preparing meals over open fires.

Meanwhile, clothing and bedding also had to be cleaned without soap or washing boards. And with injuries and illnesses being everyday occurrences – from snake bites to cholera – and with few doctors available, it was women who often acted as nurses and midwives.

The collapse of gender norms

For many women, whether they embraced the change or not, frontier life demanded the dissolution of the strict gender norms imposed in the eastern states. Survival often required women to adopt tasks otherwise considered ‘men’s work’.

“Women take on [men’s] roles too, especially when the men are sick or die,” Jones says. That included driving the wagon trains, hitching oxen and repairing an array of equipment and tools.

Some thrived taking on these new responsibilities. Jones describes some women “relishing” the change, with diaries and letters in which some women expressed pride at mastering firearms, negotiating with traders or navigating across the open plains.

Isolation, resilience – and political change

For those women who successfully navigated the journey to the frontier, the hardship wasn’t over. Once settled into homesteads and towns, frontier women managed households that doubled as production sites: growing crops, raising animals, preserving food, making clothing and educating children.

Isolation could also be an extreme challenge, with neighbours often miles away and little outside contact for months.

This self-reliance fostered confidence, and, in some places, political change. In many cases, western territories granted some women the vote decades before the eastern states. Wyoming Territory led the way in 1869, followed by Utah (1870), Colorado (1893), and Idaho (1896).

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“It’s the western states [that] give women the vote considerably earlier,” Jones notes. In part, this was a recognition of women’s contributions to survival; it was also a pragmatic move to attract more settlers.

By the time the US Census Bureau declared the frontier ‘closed’ in 1890, women had helped transform a contested wilderness into a network of farms, ranches, mining towns and growing cities.

They had endured the hardships of migration, adapted to unpredictable conditions, and knowingly or not, challenged the rigid gender boundaries of the 19th century.

Karen Jones was speaking to Ellie Cawthorne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.