Some women went west themselves. Lee Virginia Chambers-Schiller reports that prior to 1900, around 10 percent of land claims in two Colorado counties were filed by unmarried women, some of whom-like South Dakota homesteader "Bachelor Bess" Corey-were more interested in the land-grab than the man-grab. When Oklahoma's Cherokee Strip was opened to homesteaders in 1893, Laura Crews raced her horse seventeen miles in under an hour to claim the piece of land that she would tend herself for years before oil was discovered on the property.33 Crews would be the last participant of the Cherokee land run to die, in 1976, at age 105, unmarried.34
( Rebecca Traister )
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