Cowboy Kisses

In 1869, Wyoming Shocked America by Letting Women Vote

In Wyoming Territory, women didn’t have room for fainting couches. They ran boarding houses, filed homestead claims, managed ranches while husbands were on cattle drives, and taught school in one-room buildings with coal stoves.

So it’s no surprise that a strong woman, Esther Hobart Morris, helped change history in the rugged mining towns of the West long before women across America won the right to vote.

Morris lived in South Pass City, a rough gold-rush town filled with miners, saloons, and muddy streets. At the time, women in the United States had almost no political power. They couldn’t vote, hold most public offices, or influence the laws that shaped their lives.

Morris believed that needed to change. When the Wyoming Territory debated whether women should have the right to vote, she supported the idea and spoke openly about equality. Territorial leaders eventually passed a groundbreaking law—granting women the right to vote in 1869. Wyoming became the first place in the United States to do this. The law was signed by John Allen Campbell, and it sparked national attention.

Morris didn’t stop there. In 1870, she became the first woman in the United States to serve as a justice of the peace, helping settle disputes and uphold the law in South Pass City. Her role proved that women could serve in positions of authority just as capably as men.

Thus, a Wyoming woman in the 1870s could walk into a polling place, argue her opinion, and go home. The men adapted because on the frontier, survival depended on respect. Strength wasn’t intimidating. It was necessary.

Wyoming became known as the Equality State. Decades later, when the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution granted women the right to vote nationwide, Wyoming had already been allowing women to vote for more than 50 years.

On the frontier, where people often had to build new communities from scratch, bold ideas sometimes took root first. I am thankful that Esther Hobart Morris was brave enough to stand up for a women’s right to vote.