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Between 1840 and 1910, over half a million men and women traveled deep into the underdeveloped American West, the vast lands that extended from the Great Plains to the Pacific Ocean. Survival in this uncharted region required two hard-working partners, compelling women to take on equal responsibilities to men, proving to themselves - and their husbands - that they were capable of far more than society maintained. Back East, women were citizens in name only. Unable to vote, own property, or file for divorce, women were kept separate from the dynamic male world outside the home. But the women of the west rightly saw themselves as patriotic pioneers, vital contributors to westward expansion.By the mid-nineteenth century the fight for women's suffrage was radical but hardly new, until the women of the west changed the course.