The Nature of Her Business

Abstract

Josephine Foster was doing her very best to feminize the wilderness. Sprinkling feminine imagery throughout her 1905 article for a women’s publication, she described the natural beauty of Glen Alpine Springs and encouraged her readers to discover for themselves the vacation pleasures of tramping in the mountains above Lake Tahoe, California. While Foster coaxed women into the wilds, another woman worked to keep them comfortable there. Throughout that summer, Foster hiked, climbed, and got tired, but at the end of the day, a warm bed and a hot meal awaited her because Katherine Chandler was back managing Glen Alpine Springs resort and taking good care of her guests. While women vacationing in the outdoors found freedom, female resort proprietors found opportunity. At a time when women faced limited choices in work outside the home, Katherine Chandler and other female resort proprietors found ways to turn traditional expectations of femininity to their advantage as businesswomen and outdoor enthusiasts. A collection of twenty unpublished letters written by Katherine Chandler, manager of Glen Alpine Springs to the resort’s owner, Susan Gilmore Pierce, forms the basis of this research. This essay knits together several strands in the historiographies of women in business, and women in the outdoors during the late Victorian and Progressive eras while contributing to the history of early tourism at Lake Tahoe.