When imagining the West of the late nineteenth century, many Americans might think of cowboys on the open range rustling cattle, or perhaps of two men engaged in a gunfight on a dusty main street. But what about women in the West? Since the late nineteenth century, the American West has produced several popular stereotypes of women. In the early twentieth century, for example, a popular western novel—Owen Wister’s The Virginian (1903)—featured the cultured schoolmarm who worked to civilize the “Wild West.” Little House on the Prairie, a juvenile novel published in 1935 (later adapted into a popular television show of the 1970s and 1980s), brought to the public the wise and ever-helpful “Ma.” A final iconic stereotype of western women was (and is) the “bad woman,” which includes the West’s prostitutes and madams. One such representation, the “hooker with the heart of gold,” appeared in the popular television series Gunsmoke (1955–1975) in the character of “Miss Kitty.” More common, however, is the depiction of the West’s prostitutes as lonely victims, bereft of family, health, and money. Historians largely have also viewed such women as casualties. But did isolation and an unhappy end describe Louisa Cousselle’s life? Or is hers a more complicated story worthy of a different historical interpretation?