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Dana Crawford

Dana Crawford (1931–) is a nationally prominent preservationist and developer who exemplifies how one woman can transform a city. She started with Larimer Square and then Lower Downtown (LoDo), the hubs of Denver’s skid row, and helped turn them into one…

Agnes W. Spring

Agnes Wright Spring (1894­–1988) was the first Wyoming state historian (1918–19) and the first female Colorado state historian (1950­–51 and 1954–63), making her the only person to serve as state historian of more than one state. She contributed to…

Albina Washburn

Albina Washburn (1837–1921) was an important early resident of what is now Loveland and later an influential proponent of women’s suffrage and temperance across Colorado. In 1876 she advocated for women’s suffrage at the state constitutional convention,…

Alice Hale Hill

Alice Hale Hill (1840–1908) was a Denver philanthropist who helped lead institutions such as the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) and the Denver Free Kindergarten Association. Wife of Nathaniel P. Hill, a smelting entrepreneur and US senator,…

Anne Evans

Anne Evans (1871–1941) was a Colorado civic leader and patron of the arts who transformed the Denver cultural community. Among her numerous activities, Evans started and helped guide the Denver Art Museum to national prominence, assisted in the…

Antonia Brico

Antonia Brico (1902–89) was the first woman to gain wide acceptance and recognition in the field of symphony conducting. Despite being told that women could not and should not be symphony conductors, she completed the rigorous conducting course at the…

Augusta Tabor

Augusta Tabor (1833–95), born Augusta Louise Pierce, came to Colorado with her husband Horace and young son during the Colorado Gold Rush of 1858–59. As an astute businesswoman and careful money manager, she helped her husband become one of the country’s…

Beatrice Willard

Dr. Beatrice Willard (1925–2003) was an internationally recognized tundra ecologist who made significant contributions to environmental policy in Colorado and the nation. Her research in the Colorado mountains established her as a well-known ecologist,…

Caroline Bancroft

Caroline Bancroft (1900–85) was a prominent author, journalist, organizer, and socialite in twentieth-century Denver. Bancroft’s extensive writings on Colorado’s local history established the importance of the genre and served as an example for…

Caroline Nichols Churchill

Caroline Nichols Churchill (1833–1926) was a writer and newspaper editor best known for founding and editing the Queen Bee, a Denver weekly newspaper dedicated to “the interests of humanity, woman’s political equality and individuality.” Embracing…

Carrie Clyde Holly

Carrie Clyde Holly (1856–1943) of Pueblo County was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1894, making her one of the first three female legislators in the United States. In 1895 Holly became the first woman to get a bill she drafted made into…

Carrie Welton

Carrie Welton (1842–84) was a relatively well-known socialite and amateur mountaineer who climbed Colorado Fourteeners in the 1880s. When Welton perished during an ill-advised autumn ascent of Longs Peak in 1884, she became the focal point of a national…

Chipeta

Chipeta (1843–1924) was a Ute woman known for her intelligence, judgment, empathy, bravery, and quiet strength, all of which made her the only woman of her time allowed on the Ute council. She was also the wife of Ouray, whom the United States recognized…

Clara Cressingham

Clara Cressingham (1863–1906) served in the Colorado House of Representatives in 1895, making her one of the first female legislators in the United States, along with Frances Klock and Carrie Clyde Holly. In office, she became the first woman to serve in…

Dr. Florence Rena Sabin

One of the preeminent medical and scientific minds of the early twentieth century, Dr. Florence Rena Sabin (1871–1953) was a public servant devoted to improving public health. As the first woman to receive a full professorship at Johns Hopkins University…

Eliza Pickrell Routt

Eliza Pickrell Routt (1839–1907) was the first First Lady of the territory and later state of Colorado in 1875–79 and 1891–93. A strong supporter of women’s suffrage, she used her position as wife of Governor John Long Routt to advocate for expanded…

Eliza Tupper Wilkes

Eliza Tupper Wilkes (1844–1917) was a circuit-riding preacher who started eleven Universalist and Unitarian churches in the American West. The Unitarians and Universalists were two Protestant denominations that shared an interest in abolition, women’s…

Elizabeth Byers

Elizabeth “Libby” Minerva Sumner Byers (1834–1920) was a Colorado social reformer who arrived in Denver in the summer of 1859 and spent the next six decades establishing and supporting the city’s early charitable organizations, schools, and churches. Her…

Elizabeth Ensley

Elizabeth Piper Ensley (1847–1919) was a political activist and reformer who worked throughout her life for gender and racial equality. The daughter and wife of formerly enslaved people, she came to Colorado in 1887 and soon helped lead the first…

Elizabeth Iliff Warren

Elizabeth Fraser Iliff Warren (1844–1920) was one of Denver’s most influential early citizens and was instrumental in founding the Iliff School of Theology. After arriving in Denver in 1869 as a twenty-four-year-old sewing-machine saleswoman, she married…

Elizabeth Paepcke

Elizabeth Paepcke (1902–94) is best known for working with her husband, Walter, to transform the former mining town of Aspen into a cultural hub after World War II. Trained in art and design, she was perhaps most influential in getting Walter interested…

Elizabeth “Baby Doe” Tabor

From her humble Midwestern origins to becoming the famous wife of a silver magnate to her demise as a madwoman living in a dilapidated cabin, Elizabeth McCourt “Baby Doe” Tabor (1854–1935) has become one of the most popular figures in Colorado history…

Ellis Meredith

Standing less than five feet tall and weighing around 100 pounds, Ellis Meredith was a tiny woman, but she took large strides to improve life for the women of Colorado. The daughter of a well-known suffragette and pioneer resident of Montana, Emily R…

Emily Elizabeth Wilson

Emily Elizabeth “Emmy” Wilson (1902–63) was a well-known Colorado business owner, entrepreneur, and socialite who ran the Glory Hole Tavern, a popular establishment in Central City. Wilson and her tavern played an integral role in reviving the ex-mining…

Emily Griffith

Emily Griffith (1868–1947) was a visionary educator in the field of adult, vocational, and alternative education. After working as a teacher and administrator in Denver, she started the Denver Opportunity School in 1916, premised on the idea that…

Emma Florence Langdon

Emma Florence Langdon (1875–1937) was a linotype operator, historian, and labor leader celebrated for her courageous defense of the freedom of the press during the Colorado Labor Wars. When National Guardsmen arrested five prounion employees of the…

Estella Bergere Leopold

Dr. Estella Leopold is a world-renowned paleobotanist who helped spearhead the 1969 fight to save Florissant Fossil Beds in Florissant, Colorado. She was the recipient of several awards during her career, including Conservationist of the Year (1969) from…

Fannie Mae Duncan

Fannie Mae Duncan (1918–2005) was an entrepreneur and an activist for racial equality at a time of segregation in Colorado Springs. From 1947 to 1975, she owned and operated a series of businesses including the Cotton Club, the city’s first racially…

Frances Klock

Frances S. Klock (1844–1908) was one of the first three women—along with Clara Cressingham and Carrie Clyde Holly—to serve as a state legislator in the United States. The three ran for office in 1894, one year after women in Colorado achieved the right…

Gertrude Hill Berger Cuthbert

Gertrude Hill Berger Cuthbert (1869–1944) was a Denver socialite and philanthropist. Born into a prominent family, she inherited drive and ambition from her successful parents and established a legacy for herself in politics, suffrage, and local…

Hannah Marie Wormington

As a pioneering woman in a field dominated by men, Hannah Marie Wormington (1914–94) carved a scholarly niche for herself on the frontiers of American archaeology. She was a larger-than-life figure whose impact went far beyond the dozens of publications…

Helen G. Bonfils

Helen Gilmer Bonfils (1889–1972) was a well-known Colorado actress, businesswoman, and philanthropist. She is best known as manager of The Denver Post and for her contributions to the theater in Colorado through her time as an actress, producer, and…

Helen Hunt Jackson

Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–85) was an accomplished poet, author, and activist in the nineteenth century. Many of Jackson’s written works, notably A Century of Dishonor (1881) and Ramona (1884), spurred progress toward recompense for the mistreatment of the…

Helen Ring Robinson

Helen Ring Robinson (c. 1860–1923) was the first woman elected to the Colorado State Senate in 1912 and the second woman elected to any state senate in the nation. In her role as senator during the Progressive Era, she was a passionate advocate for…

Helen Thorpe

Helen Thorpe (1965–) is a Denver-based journalist and former first lady of Colorado. After spending the 1990s writing for the New York Observer, New Yorker, and Texas Monthly, she met and married Denver brewery owner John Hickenlooper just before he…

Henrietta “Nettie” Bromwell

Henrietta “Nettie” Bromwell (1859–1946) was a prominent artist and author active in Denver’s social scene during the early to mid-1900s. In addition to her artistic success, she was a Denver socialite. Today, Bromwell’s legacy is her writings and artwork…

Jane Woodhouse McLaughlin

Jane Woodhouse McLaughlin (1914–2004) moved Colorado toward a more rights-based society for individuals with mental illness. As an assistant city attorney for Denver, first president of the Colorado Association for Mental Health, and a Democratic state…

Josephine Meeker

Josephine Meeker (1857–82) was the daughter of Nathan Meeker, the Indian agent who oversaw the White River Indian Agency during the Meeker Incident, a Ute uprising in 1879. After the revolt, Utes took Josephine, her mother, another woman, and her two…

Josephine Roche

Josephine Aspinwall Roche (1886–1976) was a Colorado industrialist, labor advocate, and politician known for her role in reforming the Colorado coal industry in the 1930s. The daughter of a wealthy coal baron, Roche improved miners’ working conditions…

Julia Greeley

Julia Greeley (c. 1840–1918) was born into slavery in Missouri. Around 1880 she moved to Denver and became a Catholic. Despite being poor herself, Greeley spent the rest of her life doing good deeds for the impoverished. In 2016 the Catholic Church…

Julie Penrose

Julie Villiers Lewis McMillan Penrose (1870–1956) was one of the primary benefactors of Colorado Springs institutions in the interwar years. Her husband, multimillionaire Spencer (“Speck”) Penrose, profited from Cripple Creek gold and Utah copper in the…

Justina Ford

Justina L. Ford (1871–1952) was a medical pioneer and Denver’s first licensed African American female doctor. Ford is best known for her obstetrics and pediatric work in Denver’s Five Points community. Patients knew Dr. Ford as “the Baby Doctor,” and it…

Kate Ferretti

Henrietta “Kate” Malnati Ferretti (1891–1987) was an early twentieth-century entrepreneur who established a successful millinery business in Denver. A first-generation Italian American, Ferretti founded her business in Denver’s Little Italy and catered…

Katharine Grafton Patterson

Katharine Grafton Patterson (1839–1902) came to Colorado in 1872 with her husband, Thomas Patterson, and soon established herself as an influential clubwoman, suffragist, and philanthropist. Devoutly religious, Patterson dedicated the majority of her…

Katherine Slaughterback (Rattlesnake Kate)

Katherine Slaughterback (1893–1969) was a dryland prairie homesteader on the Colorado plains. In 1925 she became known as Rattlesnake Kate after she  killed 140 rattlesnakes, allegedly in self-defense, in Weld County. Her story, which is likely an…

Louise Bethel Sneed Hill

Louise Bethel Sneed Hill (1862–1955) was a socialite, philanthropist, and creator of Denver’s Sacred Thirty-Six, the first internationally recognized elite society in the city. Hill helped Denver attain international attention as a refined city and…

Lucy Stone

Lucy Stone (1818–93) was an orator, abolitionist, and suffragette who founded the American Woman Suffrage Association. In 1877 she campaigned for a women’s suffrage referendum in Colorado alongside fellow suffrage champion Susan B. Anthony. Although the…

Margaret W. Campbell

Margaret West Norton Campbell (1827–1908) was an ardent advocate of women’s rights and one of the nation’s most sought-after suffrage speakers. In Colorado she was instrumental in the 1877 campaign for women’s suffrage. The measure failed, but her work…

Mary Cronin

Mary Cronin (1893–1982) was an active member of the Colorado Mountain Club (CMC) and the first woman to summit each of Colorado’s Fourteeners. Today, Cronin is best known for her accomplishments in the backcountry, and the CMC she helped develop…

Mary Hauck Elitch Long

Mary Hauck Elitch Long (1856–1936) was the first woman in the world to own and operate a zoo, located at Elitch Gardens in Denver. She and her husband, John Elitch, Jr., opened the attraction in 1890, and after his death in 1891, Mary continued on as a…

Mary Lord Pease Carr

Mary Carr (1838–1933) was a dedicated philanthropist, cofounder of Longmont’s first public school and one of its first teachers, charter member of the National Woman’s Relief Corps, and an activist for women’s suffrage and equality. She helped shape…

Mary Mullarkey

Mary Mullarkey (1943–2021) was a Colorado lawyer and public servant whose career was marked by firsts. She was the first woman to serve as Colorado solicitor general, the first to serve as chief legal counsel to a Colorado governor, and the first to…

Minnie Reynolds Scalabrino

Minnie Reynolds Scalabrino (1865–1936) was a newspaperwoman, candidate for political office, and lifelong suffragette in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth. She played an important role in the women’s suffrage movement in Colorado and worked…

Mistanta (Owl Woman)

Mistanta (Mis-stan-stur, ca. 1810–47), also known as Owl Woman, was the Southern Cheyenne wife of the American trader William Bent. Born about 1810, she is credited with helping maintain good relations between the white settlers and the Native Americans…

Non-Partisan Equal Suffrage Association

The Non-Partisan Equal Suffrage Association was the main organization in Colorado working toward granting women the right to vote. The association and its precursors were influential for more than thirty years, from Colorado’s failed suffrage referendum…

Origins of Mesa Verde National Park

Mesa Verde National Park was established in 1906 as the country’s ninth national park. The site was visited and considered sacred by multiple Indigenous nations before it began attracting interest from white Americans in the late nineteenth and early…

Pat Stryker

Patricia “Pat” Stryker (1956–) is a Colorado-based businesswoman and philanthropist. With an estimated net worth of $2.6 billion, Stryker has donated more than $195 million to charity in her lifetime, mostly through the Bohemian Foundation, her Fort…

Patricia (Pat) Schroeder

Patricia (Pat) Scott Schroeder (1940–) represented Colorado’s First Congressional District—the city of Denver—in the US House of Representatives from 1973 to 1997. The first female US Representative elected in Colorado, she championed liberal issues,…

Ruth Underhill

Ruth Underhill (1883–1984) was a prominent anthropologist in the mid- to-late twentieth century, and one of the first female anthropologists to reach the stature regularly enjoyed by male colleagues. As a professor at the University of Denver later in…

Sadie Likens

Sadie Likens (c. 1840–1920) was a prominent officer of the court in Denver’s formative period, served as Colorado’s first prison matron, and was also known for her charitable work on behalf of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and other women’s…

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850–1917) was an Italian Catholic nun who came to the United States in 1889 as a missionary tasked with ministering to the country’s growing population of Italian immigrants. Over the next three decades, during her…

Sarah Platt Decker

Sarah Platt Decker (1855–1912) was a beloved leader of women, known nationwide for her advocacy of women’s suffrage and social reform. Her influence was instrumental in the 1893 vote that gave Colorado women equal suffrage. She later became the founder…

Susan B. Anthony

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) was a well-known civil rights activist and prominent leader of the women’s suffrage movement. She made her first visit to Colorado in 1877 to advocate for women’s suffrage before an upcoming referendum. Although she spent…

Temple Grandin

Temple Grandin (1947–) is a renowned advocate and expert in two very different fields: animal welfare and autism. A prolific author on both subjects, Grandin has taught at Colorado State University (CSU) since 1990. Her focus on animal welfare,…

The Denver Woman’s Press Club

The Denver Woman’s Press Club is an organization for women newspaper writers and authors founded in 1898. At the time of its founding, the club demonstrated the new social and political power of women through its involvement in a range of causes,…

Theodosia Ammons

Theodosia Ammons (1862–1907) worked extensively throughout her life to advance the cause of women’s suffrage. She became president of the Colorado Equal Suffrage Association and was cofounder of the department of domestic economy at Colorado Agricultural…

Women During Prohibition

Alcohol prohibition in Colorado (1916–33) disrupted social and gender relations in ways that would shape the state long after the law was repealed. Not only did women help enact the law, but they also helped enforce the law and even broke it, taking…

Women in Early Colorado

In nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Colorado, women’s labor was often vital to a family’s economic survival. Historian Katherine Harris demonstrated in her study of Logan and Washington Counties that women’s earnings from butter, eggs, and the…

Women's Suffrage Movement

The women’s suffrage movement was a sociopolitical movement in the late nineteenth century that secured voting rights for Colorado women by state referendum on November 7, 1893. The movement’s success made Colorado the first state to enact women’s…
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