LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Next week, the U.S. could elect its first woman president. A hundred years ago Monday, this country elected its first two women governors, and the first one to take office was Nellie Tayloe Ross.
TOM REA: She was a well-known woman in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and her husband was elected governor in the early 1920s.
FADEL: Tom Rea works with the Wyoming Historical Society.
REA: And on his death, she ran in a special election.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
So while she's grieving the loss of her husband, she has to do what no other woman has ever done before.
FADEL: Exactly. That's what it's like to be a woman. Rea says Tayloe Ross was asked to run by Wyoming's Democratic Party leadership.
REA: She had a hard time making up her mind, but when she did, she ran for office partly because she wanted to finish what he had started but also because she needed the money. She had three sons to raise.
FADEL: Rea says she governed pretty well, but she did lose her second bid for office.
MARTÍNEZ: Oh, so that was it for her career in government then.
FADEL: No. Actually, her fame as the first woman governor brought her to the attention of President Franklin Roosevelt. He appointed her director of the U.S. Mint, a position she held for 20 years. And here she is talking about the job in a documentary for Wyoming PBS.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "NELLIE TAYLOE ROSS: A GOVERNOR FIRST")
NELLIE TAYLOE ROSS: I'm wishing that while directing the coinage of money that I had some magical power by which I could direct the flow of it into channels of trade far and wide.
MARTÍNEZ: So Leila, I mean, has Wyoming often been a leader with women in politics?
FADEL: I mean, yeah. Historian Tom Rea says its legislature was the first in the U.S. to give women the right to vote.
REA: And that was way back in 1869 when Wyoming was first becoming a territory.
FADEL: And back then, men outnumbered women in Wyoming 6-to-1, and the legislators hoped women's suffrage would attract more women and families to the area.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. Sometimes too many dudes can be a problem, Leila.
FADEL: Sometimes. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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