Nan Aspinwall: The First Woman to Ride Across America Alone

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories.
Up next to the story of nan Aspinwall. An all
around Western girl and all around wild woman, she was
eventually the highest paid star in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.
Born in eighteen eighty, she was skilled at trick roping, sharpshooting, archery,

(00:31):
stunt writing, brown writing, and steer writing. But none of
these things are what she was famous for, although on
her death certificate it listed her as a lifelong housewife.
Here to tell her story is our frequent contributor, Ashley
Lebinski and.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Now Deaf Valley Days.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
We alsters are lucky. We can remember Buffalo Bill’s famous
Wild West show. Last time I saw it was in
Billy’s Montana in nineteen oh five. Little did I realize
then that one day I’d be sitting here telling the
story of two gun Men.

Speaker 4 (01:10):
It’s like the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. In Wyoming.

Speaker 5 (01:13):
There are a lot of different objects, and those objects
are tied to many museums, and one of them is
the Cody Firearms Museum, and that museum showcases thousands of firearms,
starting from your earliest guns all the way up through
modern day firearms.

Speaker 4 (01:30):
That belong to soldiers, that.

Speaker 5 (01:32):
Belonged to lawmen and outlaws, and others to performers whose
skills helped define the public perceptions of the frontier. And
one of those firearms is connected to a woman who
may not be as well known, but her name is
nan Aspinwall.

Speaker 4 (01:49):
This object belonged to her.

Speaker 5 (01:51):
It is a Revington Model twenty four, which is a
semi automatic twenty two caliber rifle that was designed by
John Moses Browning. When you look at it at first glance,
it appears relatively modest. Have you seen a lot of
guns presented to wild bust performers. They’re very gaudy, there’s
lots of engraving, and while this gun has some engraving,

(02:13):
it is ultimately a bit understated compared to the ornate
guns that you see presented to someone like Antioakle or
Buffalo Bill. And the rifle reflects kind of the design
priorities of this early twentieth century culture, which is something
that’s a little bit more portable. It’s mechanically reliable, and
it’s easy to use, and like many objects preserved in

(02:37):
museum collections, the rifle was not necessarily created to just
be remembered. You know, when it comes to firearms collections,
when it comes to technically driven artifacts, these were items
that were.

Speaker 4 (02:49):
Meant to be used, and in that use you see where.

Speaker 5 (02:52):
It’s designed, its practicality, and it reflects a lived experience
of a woman whose journey extended the idea of the
frontier beyond.

Speaker 4 (03:01):
The American West.

Speaker 5 (03:03):
Nan Aspenwall was born in eighteen eighty in New York,
but she was definitely a more Western girl because she
spent most of her childhood in Nebraska, and by the
time she came of age, the West was no longer
defined solely by expansion and conflict, but it was increasingly
this mythological kind of ideal that people in the US

(03:28):
wanted to strive for for their American identity, and people
ultimately around the world would come to associate national American
identity with this myth of the West, and her entry
into Buffalo Bill’s Wild West The Wild West Show, although
he never called it a show, kind of placed her
at the center of that transformation.

Speaker 4 (03:50):
The show was something that was highly structured.

Speaker 5 (03:53):
It presented sharpshooting, riding, and kind of relatively false frontier
narratives to audiences across the United States and Europe, and firearms,
of course played a central role in that, not necessarily
as a weapon of conflict, but as an instrument of skill.
And most people know about performers like Annie Oakley who
demonstrated that.

Speaker 4 (04:11):
Skill, but there were other people.

Speaker 5 (04:14):
Obviously involved in the Wild West, and Aspenwall was one
of them. But the most interesting kind of piece to
her story does involve Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill, but
it involves a bet, and that was that she could
ride across the country on horseback. So in nineteen ten,

(04:34):
and there was a lot of press around this. In
nineteen ten, Aspenwall undertook this endeavor that would basically defy
in her place in history because she was the first
woman to ride on horseback across North America alone.

Speaker 4 (04:46):
She started in San Francisco and she.

Speaker 5 (04:48):
Went to New York, which was four thousand, four hundred
and ninety six miles and the trip was about one
hundred and eighty days. So it started in nineteen ten
and ended in nineteen eleven. And people mostly attribute the
reason that she did this because of a bet from
Buffalo Bill, and when she went across the country, she
did so on her Thoroughbred mare named Lady Allan, which

(05:08):
is very proper, and she was responsible for every component
of that. I think that you know, you may think, okay, well,
she you know, rode her horse across the country, but
that’s not like a road trip with a car where
you just have to fill up your gas. She was
living and working with her horse, and she was completely
responsible for her horse. And in fact, she had to
shoe her horse fourteen times herself on this trip, and

(05:31):
she would use her horse to help support herself while
she was going. So she would ride, and she’d stop
in towns and give roping and riding demonstrations, hoping that
people would help support her.

Speaker 4 (05:42):
On her journey.

Speaker 5 (05:44):
One of the stories is that she would ride aimlessly
without food or water, and one of these moments on.

Speaker 4 (05:50):
Her trip, she actually collapsed.

Speaker 5 (05:52):
The trip was one hundred and eighty days long, and
about a week of that time she was in the
hospital recovering before she continued on her country track. This
was during an age when women were still not permitted
in a lot of states to ride astride, which means
that she did not always make friends when she was
traveling alone, and in fact, some say that in two towns.

(06:15):
They disapproved of her so much that she shot off
her gun that she was carrying in disgust. Outside of
this ride, she was also known as quote an oriental dancer,
so she performed as a dancer as well as a
trick shooter and a roper. Actually heard her husband Frank Gable,
were pretty well known ropers. They traveled back to Nebraska

(06:38):
a lot. They traveled and visited other states performing their
groping demonstrations, and she went by many names. She was
known as the Oriental Dancer. She was known as the
Montana Girl at one point, and the Lariat Expert as well.

Speaker 4 (06:52):
But I think my favorite.

Speaker 5 (06:54):
Nickname for her has to do with her skills as
a trick shooter, and that is.

Speaker 4 (06:57):
Two gun Nan.

Speaker 5 (06:59):
And it makes a lot of sense that today, preserved
inside the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, two gun
Nan would have a firearm that would be used to
kind of represent her life, her own mythology, and her
own history, an artifact that ultimately bridged the many worlds
that she traveled in. They connected the theatrical West of

(07:19):
Buffalo Bill’s show with the lived experience of a journey
undertaken on horseback.

Speaker 4 (07:24):
They also showcase a really prominent role for women at
the time.

Speaker 5 (07:29):
When you think back at the nineteenth century, there’s a
lot of complicated assumptions about the role of women in
that time, but figures like Aspinwall were not merely participants
in some constructed narrative. The feats that she accomplished, both
in the show and in her life showed that she
was just an active agent shaping her own path. While

(07:49):
a lot of people look back at Buffalo Bill’s Wild
West and the trick performers Annie Oakley, of course Buffalo Bill,
they may not remember Nan, but they should because this
ride that she completed was immortalized on a radio show
and then in nineteen fifty four on a TV episode
of Death Valley Days.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
And that’s our story.

Speaker 3 (08:13):
Now I have a surprise for you, the real two
Gun Nan, who appeared with Buffalo Bill’s famous Wild West.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
Show some fifty years ago.

Speaker 3 (08:24):
She’s retired now living up north somewhere or by the way,
where do you live, Nan.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
The Mohapa Desert.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
I understand that none of your neighbors know your real
life history.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
Why all the secrecy, Well, I wanted to get out
of the limelight in our day.

Speaker 4 (08:40):
The crowds chased Frank Me, just as they do for
Elvis Presley.

Speaker 5 (08:44):
Nowadays, so you may not necessarily remember the woman, but
her story was significant enough that it was immortalized in
pop culture forever.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler, and a special thanks to
frequent contributor Ashley Libinski. She’s the former co host of
Discovery Channel’s Master of Arms, and she’s the co founder
of the University of Wyoming College of Law’s Firearms Research Center.
What a story she told us here about nan Aspenwall.

(09:22):
And she was not only the first woman to ride
cross country on horseback and to do it alone and
take care of her own horses. Fourteen times she would
shoe her own horse on this well half year journey
one hundred and eighty days from San Francisco to New York.
But she was also a heck of a trick shooter,
as we learn, the highest paid star in Buffalo Bill’s

(09:45):
Wild West. The story of Nan Aspenwall, the first woman
to ride cross country on horseback, forty five hundred miles
in all. Here on our American Stories