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Visit bluevicto.com to learn more. Uh This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories. Up next, 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 1880, she was skilled at trick roping, sharpshooting, archery, stunt riding, bronk riding, and steer riding.
None of these things are what she was famous for. although on her death certificate, it listed her as a lifelong housewife. Hugh to Tell Her Story is our frequent contributor. Ashley Lubinsky. And now Death Valley Days.
We oldsters are lucky. We can remember Buffalo Bill's famous Wild West show. Last time I saw it was in Billings, Montana, back in 1905. Little did I realize then that one day I'd be sitting here telling the story of... Two gun man.
Yeah. Inside the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Wyoming, 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 that belong to soldiers, that belong to lawmen and outlaws, and others to performers whose skills help 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. This object belonged to her. It is a Remington Model 24, which is a semi-automatic .22 caliber rifle that was designed by John Moses Browning. And when you look at it at first glance, it appears relatively modest.
If you've seen a lot of guns presented to Wild West performers, they're very gaudy, there's lots of engraving. And while this gun has some engraving, it is ultimately a bit understated. Compared to the ornate guns that you see presented to someone like Annie Oakley or Buffalo Bill. And the rifle reflects kind of the design priorities of this early 20th 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 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 meant to be used. And in that use you see where Its design, its practicality, and it reflects a lived experience of a woman whose journey extended the idea of the frontier beyond the American West. Nan Aspenwall was born in 1880 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 U.S. 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. The show was something that was highly structured.
It presented sharpshooting, rioting, 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 skill, but there were other people obviously involved in the Wild West, and Aspen Waugh 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 1910, and there was a lot of press around this, in 1910, Aspen Wall undertook this endeavor that would basically define her place in history because she was the first woman to ride on horseback across North America alone. She started in San Francisco and she went to New York, which was 4,496 miles. And the trip was about 180 days.
So it started in 1910 and ended in 1911. 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 Allen, which 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 14 times herself on this trip. And 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 on her journey. One of the stories is that she would ride aimlessly without food or water. And one of these moments on her trip, she actually collapsed. The trip was 180 days long, and about a week of that time, she was in the hospital recovering before she continued on her cross-country trek. 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 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, her and her husband Frank Gable were pretty well-known ropers. They traveled back to Nebraska a lot. They traveled and visited other states performing their roping 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. But I think my favorite nickname for her has to do with her skills as a trick shooter, and that is Two Gun Nan. And it makes a lot of sense that today, preserved inside the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Two gun man would have a firearm. That would be used to kind of represent her life, her own mythology, and her own history.
A artifact that ultimately bridged the many worlds that she traveled in. They connected the theatrical west of Buffalo Bill's show with the lived experience of a journey undertaken on horseback. They also showcase a really prominent role for women at the time. When you think back at the 19th century, there's a lot of complicated assumptions about the role of women in that time. But figures like Aspenwall 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.
Well, a lot of people look back at Buffalo Bill's Wild West and the trick performers, Andy 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 1954 on a TV episode of Death Valley Days. And that's our story.
Now I have a surprise for you. The real two-gun man who appeared with Buffalo Bill's famous Wild West show some 50 years ago. She's retired now, living up north somewhere. Oh, by the way, where do you live, Nan? In the Mojave Desert.
I understand that none of your neighbors know your real life history. Why all the secrecy?
Well, I wanted to get out of the limelight. In our day, the crowds chased Frank and me just as they do poor Elvis Presley nowadays.
So, you may not necessarily remember the woman, but her story was significant enough that it was immortalized in pop culture forever. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to frequent contributor Ashley Lubinsky. 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 Aspinwall.
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. 14 times she would shoe her own horse on this, well, half-year journey, 180 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 Wild West. The story of Nan Aspinwall, the first woman to ride cross-country on horseback. 4,500 miles in all.
Here on Our American Stories. This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea.
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