Author Chris Enns spotlights overlooked roles of women on the American frontier

Author Chris Enns, an author and lecturer, recounted stories of women who shaped life on the American frontier during a public lecture, touching on entertainers, sex workers, suffragists, physicians, Pinkerton agents and the widows left after the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

"I have been writing about women of the American frontier for over 30 years," Enns said, and she used the talk to describe a range of figures from Poker Alice, a bordello operator, to Laura Keene, the actress on stage at Ford—s Theatre when President Abraham Lincoln was shot. Enns said the economic role of licensed prostitution in towns such as Deadwood, South Dakota, included fees and fines that were used to fund libraries, hospital wings and fire departments; she noted prostitution in Deadwood began in 1876 and, she said, was not outlawed there until 1980.

Enns described…