Evelyn Cameron

At the turn of the 20th century in Terry, Montana, photographer Evelyn Cameron captured a quietly revolutionary moment in the American West: the Buckley sisters mounting their horses while dressed in split skirts. Far from a fashion statement, these garments were a practical innovation for women who worked alongside men in the rugged ranchlands of eastern Montana. Traditional long skirts were not only cumbersome but dangerous on horseback, while split skirts offered freedom of movement and a safer, more efficient way to ride astride—rather than sidesaddle. Cameron, a British-born photographer and rancher, had introduced this style to the region, challenging Victorian notions of femininity with every click of her shutter.

The Buckley sisters, like many frontier women, were not content to be passive observers of the western experience. They rode, worked cattle, and lived lives defined by grit, endurance, and self-reliance. Evelyn Cameron’s images of them were not staged performances but authentic moments of daily life—moments rarely seen or documented in a male-dominated era. Her photography offered a counter-narrative to the romanticized cowboy myth, placing strong, capable women at the heart of the western story. The Buckleys, dressed in their now-iconic split skirts, came to represent a new ideal of frontier womanhood—unapologetically practical, competent, and unbound by convention.

Through Cameron’s lens, the Buckley sisters and women like them were immortalized as pioneers not only of the land but of changing social norms. Evelyn’s body of work, now treasured for its historical and artistic value, documented more than landscapes and livestock—it recorded transformation. The split skirt, simple in design yet radical in implication, was a symbol of quiet rebellion and the evolving role of women in the American West. In those dusty corrals outside Terry, Montana, Evelyn Cameron didn’t just take photographs—she captured the spirit of frontier feminism. Evelyn Cameron, Photographer