The United States created Arizona Territory by splitting New Mexico Territory in half in February 1863. Unlike some other western territories, Arizona forestalled legally granting women the right to vote or hold office, despite efforts by…

Although Utah was one of the earliest territories to codify women’s right to vote, it was not always easy for women to maintain this right. In 1887, the United States Congress passed the Edmunds–Tucker Anti-Polygamy Act; in addition to enhancing…

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (sometimes nicknamed “Mormons”) built the Salt Lake Tabernacle as a space where members could gather in large groups. Its design was such that the acoustics carry a speaker’s voice a long distance,…

Wyoming became the first United States territory to extend women the right to vote with the passage of an equality act in 1869. A few months later, Utah Territorial Secretary S. A. Mann signed a similar act, extending voting rights to women who were…

South Pass City, Wyoming, was the site of Wyoming’s first gold boom. In 1867, prospectors discovered gold, and soon a thousand people rushed to the area, hoping to strike it rich. Like most other gold strike towns, South Pass City boomed and then…

In 1906, George Burr, an American artist of natural scenes, decided to settle in Denver, Colorado, and he built Burr Studio as his home. This red brick building’s style resembles that of an English cottage. It has restricted decorative elements and…

Phoebe Appersom Hearst, mother of successful newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst, established the Phoebe Hearst Foundation in 1901. Her foundation built and ran some of the first public libraries in western mining towns, including the Hearst…

Jennie Froiseth, a staunch anti-polygamist living in Salt Lake City, formed an exclusively non-Mormon women’s group called Blue Tea in 1875. Two years later, Eliza K. Royle resigned from Froiseth’s club to pursue a more democratic organization with…

In the nineteenth century, Utah territory was principally populated by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (often nicknamed “Mormons”), and the Church maintained considerable influence over social and political affairs.…

On February 14, 1870, Seraph Young voted in Utah two days after Utah’s territorial legislature granted women the right to vote. She was, in the words of Better Days 2020, the "first woman to vote under a women’s equal suffrage law" in the United…

Elizabeth Piper Ensley came to Colorado in the 1890s. Born in Massachusetts in 1847, she studied abroad in Europe, taught school in Boston, and established a circulating library. In the 1880s, she and her husband, Howell N. Ensley, moved to…

Wyoming was organized as a territory of the United States in 1868. When the first territorial legislature met in the capital of Cheyenne in the late 1869, William H. Bright introduced a bill to give women the right to vote in Wyoming. Passed by both…