Customer Reviews

A Mine of Her Own: Women Prospectors in the American West, 1850-1950

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book fills in a gap, opens a hidden history of women who prospected in Nevada, Utah, and Alaska. It is hard to find any other books about women prospectors in the American West. It is written in an easy to read style, yet includes a lot of direct research from diaries, newspapers, and family biographies. This book describes the lives of women who prospected from around 1860 to 1940, women who preferred prospecting to any other kind of work, including housewifery. The reader gets an insight into their daily lives in the context of the times. Their marriages, partnerships, friendships, apparel, mine-site dwellings, society's attitudes toward them, even styles of child-raising are described. However, the book does not present any technical info on mining geology. It was surprising to learn that one of the women described in this book operated a very successful Nevada mine in a humanitarian manner, with a dorm, mess hall, and swimming pool for the miners. Others turned over child-rearing to relatives due to the isolation of prospecting. They wandered over mountains and desert, sometimes alone, or preferring men as prospecting partners because, according to the author, men provided more muscle strength for digging a mine. Some women were limited in their access to investors because they did not frequent saloons. Others jumped claims and swindled investors, exaggerating the potential of a claim. Not many got rich, but all loved the outdoors. Overall, they were women with a Can Do attitude who pursued their dreams, just like the cover photo depicts.