Historic Women’s Suffrage Sites

Women fought long and hard for their right to suffrage, or legal voting, in the United States. For centuries, men in America and in Europe before had tied women’s value to being submissive, raising children, and keeping a home, and such patriarchal societies insisted women had no place voting. Women knew otherwise, and they fought for the right to vote for decades in an active campaign that ultimately spanned nearly a century. It began in the 1820s in United States territories and finally came to fruition when, in 1920, the United States ratified the Nineteenth Amendment and women finally gained the right to vote in all elections to government office in the United States. In the time between the beginning of the suffrage movement and the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, the Intermountain West was a place where the women’s suffrage movement was alive and thriving. This tour surveys several sites which were places of significance for the movement both locally and beyond.

Suffrage in South Pass City

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…

Suffrage at Council Hall in Salt Lake City

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…

Suffrage at the Salt Lake Tabernacle

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,…

Suffrage at the City and Council Building in Salt Lake City

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…