ABSTRACT
Cattleman Kay Luman scoffed at his sixteen-year-old daughter's offer to help with roundup and branding. Luman ran a successful livestock business in southwest Wyoming from the turn of the century through the 1920s. Already, his daughter had proven herself an able ranch hand, herding sheep, driving oxen, and harvesting crops. But Luman resisted her participation in cowcamp. “You don't know what it's like,” he said. “All the ranchers send their meanest broncs up there. I don't think you can ride their horses. They have no time to be coddling you girls.” 1 Though Luman's daughter proved him wrong, Kay Luman spoke for many men in the cattle industry when he discouraged women from the job. Despite the presence of female labor on ranches during this period, cowboys declared their work masculine territory. The story of why this was so reveals contests over gender and class privilege laid bare by changes in the cattle industry.
