The Struggle for Suffrage and Citizenship in the West

Before her death on November 27, 2019 at the age of 95, Agnes Baker-Pilgrim was the oldest living member of the Takelma Tribe.1 Better known as Grandma Aggie, Baker-Pilgrim was deeply committed to her role as a tribal elder.

Alice Ballard was the youngest of seven children born to John and Amanda Ballard, the first African Americans to own a home above the Malibu coastline. She was born in 1870 in Agoura Hills and raised in the nearby Santa Monica Mountains.

Manzanar is most frequently associated with Japanese incarceration; however, its story stretches back thousands of years as part of the homelands of the Owens Valley Paiute and other Native peoples. Just thirty-four miles from Manzanar, Alice Piper, a 15-year-old Paiute student, made history in 1924 by successfully suing the Big Pine School District to integrate their classrooms and allow Indigenous students to attend their newly built school.

Anna Louise Strong, a prolific writer and journalist, brought socialist politics to the mountains when she co-founded Cooperative Campers of the Pacific Northwest in 1916. As the outdoor club’s first president, Strong strove to make Mount Rainier National Park accessible to Seattle’s working class by providing affordable transportation, lodgings, food, and supplies to campers.

The life of Annie Hall Strong, a white woman who spent decades in Seattle before pursuing wealth in Alaska with her husband, highlights the connection between those two places during the Klondike Gold Rush.

Beatrice Rhodes spent ten years (1920-30) as the steward of Lehman Caves in Great Basin National Park along with her first husband. Her time there coincided with the era’s burgeoning automobile tourist industry, fueling a desire among many to explore the US West and escape the pressures of urban modernity. Rhodes’ role as an advertiser, tour guide, and even entertainer at the Lehman Caves embodied this trend to seek excitement and individuality in the rural West.

Betty Reid Soskin is an East Bay-based civil rights activist, musician, and pioneering businesswoman. Through her work at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historic Park, she has also become a leading spokesperson for the diverse experiences of domestic war-effort workers during World War II.

Once an actress with abandoned dreams of joining a convent, Carlotta Monterey O’Neill collaborated with her playwright husband Eugene O’Neill on some of his most famous work during their five years in “Tao House” in Danville, California.

Caro Luévanos-Garcia leads by example and social media to encourage hiking and other outdoor recreation among Latinx communities, especially middle-aged and senior populations.

Catherine O’Byrne made her way halfway across the world to find her home, like 2 million other Irish women from 1850-1900. Escaping the massive death tolls of the Great Famine and dire prospects, young women were like Catherine had to support themselves.