Women’s History Month is here, and in 1920 a group of women made history in Jackson, Wyoming, as one of the first-ever all-female town councils in the United States.
Jackson had only officially been a municipality for about six years when this election rolled around.
But it had a long-running reputation as a wild part of the Wild West where troublemakers could and sometimes did spend time.
In the 1920 election, five women in this “bad man rendezvous” of a town stepped forward to run for local offices.
This was unusual for the time, though not unprecedented: women in Wyoming had the right to vote for decades before this (and before the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution came along), and towns in Kansas and Utah had also seen all-women councils.
Anyway, this slate of women all won: Grace Miller was Jackson’s mayor; Rose Crabtree, Mae Deloney, Faustina Haight and Genevieve Van Vleck were the town council.
Crabtree defeated her own husband to win her seat!
While national newspapers scoffed at the “petticoat rulers,” the members of the new administration put their heads down and got to work.
The town was short on money, because the previous council hadn’t put much effort into collecting taxes.
These councilors personally collected all the money due to the town, making the municipal treasury ten times bigger than it was when they’d started.
They fixed roads, they expanded electric service, they literally cleaned up the town, launching sanitation projects and establishing new penalties for littering.
The mayor and council returned to private life after several years, and Jackson didn’t elect another woman until the 1980s.
But they are still a big part of the town’s story: Mayor Miller’s house is now part of the National Elk Refuge, and some of the councilor’s homes are now well-regarded restaurants and stores.
And if you look around town long enough and you’re likely to see a famous photo of the five leaders standing together.
As the mayor once said, “We simply tried to work together.”
Today is National Worship of Tools Day.
And a good place to carry out that worship is the town of Ishpeming, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
It’s home to Big Gus, the world’s largest chainsaw.
Gus has a real engine and a real chain (so be careful, maybe?)
Petticoat Rulers: 1920 All Women Jackson Town Council Inspires Women Today (Wyoming Public Media)
Big Gus is the world’s largest chainsaw (Boing Boing)