It wasn't the men that settled the West. It was the women The Old West was a forbidding territory. Deciding to pack up all your earthly belongings and head into the unknown was not an easy decision to make. It was a harder decision to make for the women than it was for the men. But once they were committed to it, most of the credit for settling the west must go to the women. It was the women who dug in and tended the sick, planted fruits and vegetables, cooked and cleaned and fed the gold miners and put down the necessary roots to settle the west. It was the women who insisted, "I'm not crossing that God-forsaken desert again." They were now in the west, and that's where their homes were going to be.