Crossings: Women on the Santa Fe Trail
- Location: Missouri History Museum, Lindell Boulevard, St. Louis, MO, USA (View on Google Maps) Start Date: December 11, 2024
- Start Time: 6:30 pm
Join Dr. Frances Levine, past president of the Missouri Historical Society, as she launches her new book, Crossings: Women on the Santa Fe Trail. The Santa Fe Trail has a special allure in Southwestern history and a surprising number of links to St. Louis. Connecting the far northern frontier of the newly formed Mexican nation with the westward-expanding United States that began in our gateway city, the trail crossed Indigenous lands and became a cultural nexus. Within a generation the Santa Fe Trail evolved into the route for advancing US interests and the expansionist policies of Manifest Destiny.
Crossings introduces readers to a diverse group of women, including Comanche captive María Rose Villalpando; suffragist Julia Anna Archibald Holmes and her enslaved servant, Jame; and Jewish pioneers Betty and Flora Spiegelberg. This book shines a light on their adventures and challenges crossing the continent in a time before railroads.
