Historians, writers, and enthusiasts have published hundreds of books about the Santa Fe Trail. Most of those accounts tell the stories of men who traveled the route between St. Louis and Santa Fe, but women from many cultural and economic backgrounds also had a variety of reasons to traverse the trail.

Dr. Frances Levine, past president of the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis and former director of the New Mexico History Museum and Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe, discusses the trailblazing women between 1760 and the late 1870s as part of Women’s History Month at the Library.

Her new book, Crossings: Women on the Santa Fe Trail, looks beyond women as homesteaders or emigrants and the stereotype that they were reluctant travelers. Levine, who lives in St. Louis, discusses the stories of women on both ends of the trail and how traversing it enabled diverse people and cultures to forge extensive commercial networks and communities.