How Mail-Order Brides Helped Settle the American West

When news got out in 1848 that gold had been discovered in California, Americans began the largest mass migration in U.S. history. Some fortune hunters arrived with little more than a knapsack. Others brought wagonloads of mining supplies, camping gear and enough food for the long journey west.

What most of these men neglected to bring was women. The resulting shortage fueled the rise of America's so-called mail-order brides—women who agreed to marry frontier men after courting by letter.

In some communities, the imbalance became extreme. Historian Elliott West calls it “a truly bizarre skew” in his 2023 book Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion. “Some mining camps in Idaho in 1870 had nine men for every woman, and in Nevada City, California, in 1850, the ratio was forty-four to one.”

Many of these men never intended to settle in the West. They just wanted to get their share of the riches and head back home. Some had left wives and sweethearts behind on the understanding that they’d soon return. But in the end, few struck gold and many struggled simply to survive. “Quickly they learned how much they had relied on wives, mothers and sisters for life’s basics,” West writes.