Frontier Comrades

Frontier Comrades examines six accounts of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender lives on the frontier of the American West. Each account interprets this history through experiences that take place in different parts of the West, moving chronologically from the fur trade era to the dawn of the automobile age.

Jim Wilke provides the first comprehensive accounts of figures such as transgender stage driver Charley Parkhurst; transgender Seventh Cavalry laundress Mrs. Noonan (also known as Mrs. Nash); and the extraordinary Clara Dietrich and Ora Chatfield, known by the contemporary press as “lady lovers.” Frontier Comrades also offers glimpses of individual personalities: the cool and detached grandeur of William Stewart as he traversed the West during the fur trade era; the stubborn determination of Charley Parkhurst after California’s gold rush; the careful, giddy energy of Mrs. Noonan; the hidden passions of Tombstone sheriff William Breakenridge for a Vanderbilt and a local rustler; the desperate bravery of Dietrich and Chatfield as they sought to elope from Victorian Aspen; and the masculine, matter-of-fact comradeship of loggers and miners as they worked the distant Sierras.

The maelstrom of opportunities and conflicts that made up the West affected lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender westerners in intrinsically personal ways. The accounts in Frontier Comrades provide an intimate yet expansive view of the American West.