This is a great link to many interesting reading like these excerpts below:

A portfolio of bold American women who changed the world.

Alexis de Tocqueville came to America to study democracy. At the end of his two-volume Democracy In America, he wrote, “if one asked me to what do I think one must principally attribute the singular prosperity and growing force of this people, I would answer that it is to the superiority of its women.” With that spirit in mind, we present a photo essay of the strong, bold, sassy, bawdy, stubborn, bodacious and superior women of the Old West.

The most famous female journalist in the nation was told by one editor that it was impossible to think a woman could go around the world in 80 days, like Jules Verne’s popular novel. “Very well,” she said angrily, “start the man and I’ll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him.”

She completed the trip in 72 days and then wrote a successful book about it. She is seen below wearing one of her road outfits.

Courtesy Library of Congress