February 12-14, 2010

“Cowboys & Sweethearts” evoke many images associated with the Arizona Territory (AT). The West held great attraction for many who were looking for adventure or for a new place to plant roots, raise families, and build communities. As Joyce Woodson so aptly says “Oh, I could have lived anywhere in the world, if I hadn’t seen the West.”

Love in the West was a unique enterprise that took on many forms and flavors. Women were scarce in the developing territories during the 1870’s to 1890’s, yet they played a key role in running a ranch or home, and being the helpmate, the lover and mother. Life was very difficult and lonely in the West, where a neighbor was a “fur piece” and it might be “many a mile” to the nearest spread.

The cowboy was always on the lookout for a potential “soul mate.” In “The Granger’s Daughter,” S. Omar Barker describes a cowboy’s impression of a young girl who waves to him from “the doorway of a dugout” as he is driving a herd of cattle. She is the embodiment of the “ideal woman.” She is innocent, friendly, tough, capable, sensitive and pure. Over the weeks, he fantasizes on her and decides that, at the end of the drive, instead of following the allure of the “fancy gals in Abilene,” he’s riding back to be with the Granger’s daughter. The Cowboy songs often paint the picture of the cowboy hanging up his “trail days” and settling down.