Women of the West is a fresh and revealing account of what life was really like for pioneer women in the western United States between 1830 and 1910, from making soap and churning butter to branding cattle and driving ox teams. "Those were the days that tried men's souls and bodys too, and womans constitutions they worked the mussle on and it was their to stay," wrote Keturah Penton, one of the 11 women featured in this acclaimed book. Captured in this lavishly illustrated history--150 photographs from over 40 archives in 16 western states--are the real lives of the real women who traveled the vast frontier. Not the women recorded or explained by scholars, nor those who hid in the shadows of history while men fought wars, passed legislation, homesteaded and found gold. Instead, they are brave, determined individuals who made themselves known through their own words in their letters, their diaries, and their journals.