Women's Suffrage on the Western Frontier

FAIN: BH-50226-07

Wyoming Humanities Council (Laramie, WY 82072-3459)
Marcia Wolter Britton (Project Director: March 2007 to August 2013)
Shannon D. Smith (Project Director: August 2013 to June 2009)

Two one-week workshops for 80 school teachers investigating women's suffrage in the West at a number of Wyoming landmarks.

The Wyoming Humanities Council and the University of Wyoming's College of Education, in partnership with the Wyoming State Department of Parks and Cultural Resources, propose to conduct two one-week summer teacher workshops in 2008 that will feature the South Pass National Historic Landmark and South Pass City State Historic Site. These sites in the American West provided the surprising backdrop for the first women's suffrage act, passed during the 1869 Wyoming Territorial Legislature. The NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture grant proposal is a reapplication. In 2006, 74 teacher participants found the sites and the Wyoming women's suffrage case study to be both startling and revealing as they explored the central question of the workshop--why did women's suffrage first take root in the western states at places like South Pass City, rather than in the East where the established suffrage organizations placed their emphasis and hope?