Growing up can be hard enough, but when you are a teenage girl on the western frontier every day is a lesson in survival. From being held captive by a Native American tribe (like Olive Ann Oatman), to mastering the dangerous business of wrangling cattle (like Edith Jane Bass), Amazing Girls of Arizona captures the remarkable lives of eleven real American girls (all seventeen years old or younger) who were pioneers of their time. Meet Laurette Lovell, born in 1869 with a severe leg deformity, who at age thirteen started on her path to be a renowned pottery artist and painter. Edith Bass, born...

True stories of the Grand Canyon state's mostinfamous robbers, rustlers, and bandits."

This book presents the compelling histories of fifteen pioneer women, all born before 1900, who traveled Nevada Territory in unstable wagons, on temperamental mules, and in early Motel Ts to leave a legacy of courage and celebration as they broke records, hearts, and rules while conquering uncharted ground. Meet Ferminia Sarras, a Nicaraguan immigrant with four young daughters who arrived in Nevada in the early 1800s determined to seek her fortune as a miner . . . and succeeded; Dat so la lee, a Washoe Indian renowned for her basket-weaving artistry whose work is today preserved in museums;...

Louise Larocque Serpa often said she was born in the wrong place, to the wrong woman, at the wrong time. Born in 1925 and growing up in New York society with a mother who was never satisfied with her rather lanky, unpolished daughter, teenager Louise eventually found happiness when she spent a summer on a Wyoming dude ranch scrubbing toilets, waiting tables and wrangling cattle. Later in life, she settled in Tucson, Arizona, where her introduction to photographing rodeos came about after a friend invited her to watch his children participate in a junior rodeo competition. Using a cheap...