Women have played an important—though often hidden—part in Yosemite. In the 1800s, women were expected to play a traditional role in the private world of the family and the home. With the birth of the railroad and as the Gold Rush drew people to California in the late 1800s, pioneering women found ways to broaden traditional roles.
Constance Cummings, 1893
The work of female artists inspired other women to visit Yosemite and the West. British author Therese Yelverton penned an 1871 novel about her early Sierra experience called Zanita: A Tale of the Yo-Semite. Constance Gordon-Cummings completed 50 watercolors and drawings and staged an exhibition of her work during a three-month stay in 1878. Her book, Granite Crags of California, published in 1886, included a travel narrative about Yosemite; Mary Winslow, one of the first female traveling photographers, documented Yosemite's landscape in 1895; and Jesse Benton Fremont wrote Far West Sketches in which she described her visits to Yosemite Valley. Fremont was the wife of John C. Fremont and daughter of Thomas Hart Benton, important figures in Western American history, yet she still distinguished herself as a notable author and political activist in her own right.
