Quickies: Josie Bassett - Badass Woman

On my way out of Colorado, I decided to camp a couple of nights at Dinosaur National Monument.  The park itself is mind blowing with the diverse collection of geological wonders, including a wall of dinosaur bone specimens that would send any ten-year-old kid into fits of glee.  The park also features an auto tour where you can drive and stop at various spots of historical interest, including ancient Native American glyphs and this cabin, pictured above, which belonged to an extraordinary woman, Josie Bassett.  

Josie was a badass.  Josie came from what was at the turn of the 20th Century a very unconventional family. They taught her skills that most people would at the time only show boys, including riding and roping, shooting, and cattle raising.  This same family was, at one point rumored to have helped Butch Cassidy and his fellow outlaws.  In 1913, after living through five marriages, (one widowhood and four divorces-very unusual for the times), she decided, at age 40, to homestead.  She grew her own vegetables. She butchered her own meat.  She didn't have any utilities.  She wore pants, not skirts.  She cut her hair (curly, red, natch) short.  She roundly pissed off the establishment in the nearby towns. She lived at her pad until 1963-that's fifty years of, what we would say in the 21st Century, living off the grid. You go, gurrrrl.