- Across Wyoming in 2026, dozens of communities are participating in the America two 50 observance in Carbon County.

That observance focuses on Dr.

Lillian Heath.

She was the first woman ever to be licensed as a physician in the state, and she's part of a couple of the most colorful stories you'll ever hear.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming, PBS.

This is Wyoming Chronicle.

There weren't many female physicians in America in the late 19th century at the time of Wyoming statehood.

In 1890, the number of woman doctors in what's now the Mountain time zone, very likely was zero.

Then came Lillian Heath beginning as a teenager in Rollins, working as an assistant to a Union Pacific Railroad doctor.

She gained years of practical medical training and obstetrics anesthesia and treating injuries from farming, ranching, law enforcement and railroad work, including gunshot wounds.

She was still in high school in Rollins when her medical work brought her in contact with one of the most notorious crimes and fearsome criminals in Wyoming history, including receiving a ghastly artifact as a gift that she kept in her home for half a century.

Formal medical training culminated in her becoming the first woman to be a licensed physician in Wyoming, and she also was a wife, an innkeeper, and even a fashion model.

Born in the year the Civil War ended, Dr.

Lillian Heath lived to see the Space age and as part of Wyoming's America two 50 celebrations.

She's remembered in a new exhibit in Rollins at the Carbon County Museum, designed and created by the museum's director Tom Mesick.

When I was looking through this long list of grants from the governor's office to enable Wyoming communities to participate in Wyoming's Observance of the America two 50 celebration nationwide.

You had a particular idea for your museum that got one of these grants and it's honoring and remembering a particular person.

Who was she?

- Her name was Dr.

Lillian Heath.

She is a proud Rollins and Carbon County resident, or was, I should say, but she was Wyoming's first licensed female doctor.

- I see.

- So you had a, you know, several doctors around that didn't necessarily have licenses or were kind of quacks or whatever, and there were several licensed doctors in Carbon County and Rollins that were male, but she attained the first one in Wyoming overall.

- So let's set the timeframe here.

She was born, I believe in during the Civil War, - Right at the end, born in 1865 in - Wisconsin.

And then she lived for almost a hundred years, correct?

- Yes, she was 96 when she passed away.

- This timeframe though, was not a time when there were many female doctors really at all.

Am I correct in assuming that like so many things that happened in certain towns in Wyoming, it had something to do with the arrival of the railroad?

- Yeah, definitely everything, especially here in Rollins and Carbon County.

I mean, Rollins was established off the Union Pacific and it really grew from there.

- The Transcontinental Railroad completed in Utah, 1869, and so she was a little girl then - Her father came here and he was actually a railroad locomotive artist and a painter, and so he would go around and follow the railroads and paint locomotives.

Interesting career.

- So maintenance type work.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- And there's just so many jobs related to the railroad and that settled.

So much of Wyoming was settled because even if you weren't working directly for it, but because it was here, suddenly there's just this going from nothing to something - Pretty much.

Yeah.

Rollins, they didn't want to become a particularly, you know, hell on wheels type of town that you saw in Benton, which was, you know, just down the tracks a little bit.

That lasted less than a year and there were something like a hundred murders in a hundred days or something crazy.

And Rollins very early on did not want to have that reputation and it, it wanted to last.

- So it came time to decide how Rollins Carbon County, your museum was going to participate in America two 50 if it was going to, your idea was to showcase and focus on Dr.

Lily and Heath?

- Yeah, it was actually kind of one of the first things I thought of when I started.

We had a small kind of display on Lily and Heath here originally in our original layout, and it didn't really do her justice.

So then this opportunity came around and I thought, what a perfect way to apply for a grant for the 250th and incorporate a larger American history aspect to it as well.

- How did you make that link from her to bigger history?

- I decided to do some research and deep dives into America's overall female doctors - In - About the hundred years that she lived.

I'm not sure if she met any of them.

Some of them lived back east or on the reservations or all over the place.

And so we, we wanted to ensure that the, the aspect of women in healthcare was, was paramount to her life.

And, and it was such a key component to her history as well, that we felt that we couldn't leave it out.

- And it turns out she's part of a couple of larger, more famous, more widely famous Wyoming stories.

And I don't, you may be sick of talking about the man named Big Nose George, but I think a lot of people in Wyoming who don't have much of detailed knowledge about Wyoming history at all have heard that name, at least.

Who was and how did he end up being connected to her?

- S so big knows George, his gang attempted to rob a train and they kind of botched it a little bit.

And they were pursued by two lawmen named Tip Vincent and Robert Widow Field, - Great name and - Yeah.

And so they found his, his hideout up near Elk Mountain and they, they attempted to ambush him and him and his gang attacked and killed these two lawmen here in Carbon County.

And they were locals and so everyone was very upset that they were killed.

Big Nose was recaptured in 1881 and brought back to Rollins to be tried for murder.

The story goes, he was captured in Montana, kind of bragging about how he committed this murder and in Rollins, and that's kind of, you know, part of the folk lo kind of history, right?

Braggadocious outlaw.

You can't get much better than that.

So anyway, he was arrested, brought back to Rollins, and he was tried and found guilty of murder while he was in the Rollins jail.

Now, not the Wyoming State Penitentiary, but the Rollins Jail, which was over on Front Street at the time.

He attempted an escape and so he attacked the jailer and knocked him out and tried to, tried to leave.

Now he was convicted by the way, so he was set to be hung about a week after this happened.

So he attacked, the jailer escaped and the jailer's wife actually managed to get the gun and force him back into his cell.

And so we have her pocket watch here in the next to the, - I'm sitting here, we're so kind of chuckling and smiling about this, but of course this is deadly.

Yeah.

Serious business.

Oh, for sure.

People being killed, a capital punishment, anything but funny at the time.

- No, definitely - Not.

Continue.

- So George goes back to the prison her back to his cell, and turns out the people in Rollins had had enough of George's shenanigans and so they formed a lynch mob and yanked him out of the, the, the jail and found a light post and short drop and a sudden stop later George was dead.

- Wow.

- So enter Lillian Heath, - Enter Lillian Heath - And Dr.

Thomas McGee and Dr.

John Osborne.

And John Osborne was the up surgeon at the time.

And so since a UP detective was killed, the UP felt it was necessary to bring in their own doctor, which I totally understand.

Dr.

McGee at the time was Rollins and Carbon County's main physician.

Dr.

Lillian Heath, who was a teenager at the time, had been previously volunteering and training to be a nursing assistant with McGee.

She always had this, this medical bug.

She always wanted to be in the medical field.

And so one of the most famous events in Carbon County history took place when they performed the autopsy of Big Nose.

George, - I've always wondered to me, an autopsy is done to consider the cause of death.

I think it was pretty clear what caused Big Nose, nose, George Parrot's death.

Why was the autopsy done?

Do we have any knowledge of that?

- One of the stories I've heard is that, you know, they kind of used it, his autopsy as a training purpose exercise.

Back then finding a cadaver wasn't as easy as it is now.

You know, you go to a big medical school and Rollins at that time still, it was a growing town, but it was still kind of as it is a bit today, out in the middle of nowhere.

And so any opportunity to, sounds a bit macab, but practice.

And so, and Lillian being a trainee at the time, she was about 16, I believe.

- So they bring a 16-year-old girl in to watch them cutting apart the cadaver.

- Yeah.

And so one of the, one of the main aspects of that autopsy was the removal of George's skull and brain.

And so back then the idea that your brain size and your skull cavity size determined what type of person you were, if you were going to be more, more apt to do crime or whatever, was determined by your brain size.

- So they thought - Yeah, yeah.

And so they, they kind of took Big Nose George apart and as a token of their appreciation, they gave the skull cap to Lillian Heath when she was about 16 years old as a memento and the rest of Big Nose, what he was wearing that day.

And everything was pickled in a whiskey barrel and buried out, buried in Rollins.

It was behind Dr.

McGee's house actually.

And so they just kind of buried him there and forgot about Big Nose for a while.

And, and then Lillian East went on with her medical career.

- So in addition to this, what's sometimes referred to as a skull cap at the top half of the skull, am I right about That's what it was and she Yep.

She was given that and kept it.

There's another well-known artifact about Yes, big was George as well, which I think is here, isn't it?

- Oh yeah, we have it, it's probably our biggest draw.

It's been featured on shows such as Mysteries at the museum and various podcasts and Macab history stuff.

- Okay, let's have it.

- So Dr.

Osborne, the up surgeon, he decided that he wanted a memento of Big Nose himself.

And so he had part of big noses, thighs skin removed and sent to a tanner in Denver and wanted to make a pair of shoes out of the skin of Big Nose George.

And so they took part of Big Nose skin and mixed it with cow hide and leather to this pair of shoes.

And then Osborn went on to become elected Wyoming's third governor, governor Osborn and infamously, allegedly infamously wore the shoes to his inauguration.

And so he only served one term as Wyoming governor.

So, you know, you can look into that how you want, but he, he had those shoes his whole life.

- So this piece of the cranium, the bone, the skull, the skull cap, she kept it, for what reason?

What, was it just sitting there on a shelf or what'd she do with it?

- It kind of served multiple purposes.

She said she used it as a pen cup, a flower pot, a door stop.

Her husband used it as an ashtray when he would smoke his pipe.

And I mean, after a while you kind of just forget really what it is and it's just like, oh, that's just that weird thing I got when I was 16 and we gave the autopsy to that outlaw.

So in 1950 they're renovating part of downtown and by this time Big Nose had been forgotten in the collective memory, you know, as history goes and ran across a whiskey barrel buried in the alley and what's this?

And so popped it open out, spills a bunch of bones and called the, the police and the sheriff and they pull out the skull, the skull does not have its skull cap.

And they're like, wait, - This must be - Lillian Heath.

Dr.

Heath has that skull cap bowl we've all seen.

So she brings it over with her husband and they plop it right on top of Skull - Perfect Fit - Skull and it fit, that's how they identified Big Nose George.

And so it's like, that story is just so insane that it, it just covers every generation of her life.

And it's, like I said earlier, it's just like that, that whole episode just kind of encapsulates like her entire medical career.

So she gets it as an, as an intern and then gives it to them to identify big nose towards the end of her life.

- Do I dare ask, do you have it here?

- We have the skull.

- You do?

- And then the skull cap actually is at, at a Union Pacific Museum in, in Iowa.

- Wow.

- I have tried to reunite it.

I've asked, but of course they, they don't want to give it up.

They - Covered it as well.

- Exactly.

So one of these days maybe we'll get together and do a ceremonial reunification, or at - Least for, for a while, like big art museums do for the next 18 months.

You can - See it - Together, see it together or something At that time, what I think might still be called a frontier physician who, especially was a woman, tended to have a specialty in what today we might call O-B-G-Y-N.

And that's certainly what she was a big part of what her practice was.

- Yeah, I mean at the time, pretty much any doctor available has kind of served that purpose.

Yeah.

She was also more of a general physician as well and having to go out in the planes at night with dealing with all different sort of injuries.

You know, my horse kicked my face in my one particular one.

She had to treat a man who had accidentally discharged his weapon and a bullet went into his shoulder.

So oftentimes she would've to go out to situations where the kitchen table would become, become the operating - Room, the old bring hot water and torn bedsheets kind of scenario, I guess.

- Yeah.

So she, you know, dealt with everything from the common flu to delivering children to any different sorts of injuries you would, you would even get today - Learned by considerable experience.

Then in the more clinical setting, she was, her specialty was anesthesiology.

- One of the big stories that, that she ran across, and this was before she was licensed, but she was still working for Dr.

McGee and had gone through more formal education at this time.

And this was five years after Big Nose George.

So she was in her twenties at this point.

Yeah.

A gentleman named George Webb attempted suicide, sadly, and for lack of a better term, botched his attempt and causing severe damage to his face.

And so you had Dr.

McGee who helped Lillian Heath as her mentor.

Then you had Dr.

Fode, who was the dentist in Rollins.

And then you had Lillian Heath assist to attempt to rebuild this man's face from a gruesome injury.

- We're talking about 1880s here still.

- 1886 was when that occurred.

And so This man underwent 30 over 30 surgeries to rebuild his face.

They, his jaw was completely destroyed, missing every tooth in his mouth.

The shell or, or the, the, the slug kind of went up and right through his jaw, up through his nose and scraped off his forehead.

So they had to do skin grafts, they had to rebuild his jaw and his mouth and then to rebuild his nose.

And that requires many, many, many surgeries to get everything right.

Lillian Heath was immensely important in that procedure.

So Dr.

McGee actually remarked that he was, that she was one of the best anesthetists that he ever worked with 'cause she was very good at it.

And so back then you would have kind of like a wire mask and you'd put your cloth or cotton in it and you'd hold it over their face.

And oftentimes back then the main anesthetic was ether Yeah.

To knock you out.

And so it wasn't like today.

And trust me, I don't know anything about modern anesthesia, but you know, it takes a, you gotta monitor it as well and move medicine up or down to make sure that the person doesn't wake up.

And so after 33 surgeries, there's a lot of detail that you have to undertake as that procedure.

So, but she, she performed miraculously in that - And the man survived.

He did survive.

He didn't get infected.

He, - No, - He, - That was before an modern antibiotics and everything, so - It, it worked.

You have pictures again in the museum showing some of that, including skin taken from his forehead to reconstruct his nose.

And there, there he is not looking too thrilled about it all.

But it semi miraculous for its day, I would think.

Especially in raws, Wyoming.

- Yeah.

Especially in 1886.

- And - I mean, I think if you tried that today, I I think it would still be miraculous.

- Would it turn out much better honestly, than they did?

I don't know.

That's a a good question.

In theory, it's a tough call.

So they were ambitious people as well.

And here she was this young woman right, right there with them.

So before she was licensed, eventually that happened.

What do we know about what medical training and licensing was like in those days?

What did, what sort of degree did she get?

And from where?

- She went to a school in Iowa originally, and she was only one of three women to graduate from the medical school she attended.

And she returned to Rollins in 1893.

Funny, she actually graduated high school late, just I think to, to earn more medical, medical training from McGee.

And then he actually, him and her father endorsed her decision to go to medical school.

Her mother was kind of dead set against it, you know, there was this idea back then about women can't be doctors and, and so her father actually kind of furthered her passion for it and she got the itch right off the bat.

And so she wanted to keep going and so she got her medical degree and then returned to Rollins and opened her, officially opened her own practice in 1893.

- So she had more of a clinical practice then, or still, I suppose, was making the equivalent of many long distance house calls even at that time?

- Oh yeah.

She, she would perform all the duties from her office building, which was actually in her parents' house.

I see.

Originally.

And so, you know, as you would go to the doctor today for whatever reason Yeah.

She helped those patients and delivered babies and still would go out in the middle of the night to help people.

She famously carried a 32 revolver in her jacket pocket just in case.

And sometimes she said that she would dress as a man.

The women really were the ones that had a problem with them, with her as a female doctor.

And so - Laying hands on their husbands or something like that, - Possibly.

Yeah.

You know, there's that idea that, you know, you can't trust her as a doctor.

And so she said, she has this great quote, she said, men folk received me cordially.

Women were just as catty.

And so when she had to treat female patients, they often didn't pay her 'cause they just didn't feel it was right.

So it is what it is, I suppose.

But, but I think if you're in danger and if you're a doctor at that point, if you got a bullet in your shoulder, I don't frankly care who would show up as long as they get it out.

- So she practiced up into the 20th century, but, and became a well-known and revered person in the community.

- Oh yeah.

She practiced as in Rollins as one of Rollin's physicians for 15 years.

She joined the Rollins Bicycle Club, which in the 1890s and early 19 hundreds bicycles were fairly new technology.

So she, she joined the bicycle club and she was well loved in town.

And then about, you know, early 1910s, she decided to try new endeavors after being in the medical field at this point for close to 30 years already, even going back to her intern days.

And she went on and, and became a model for the Daniels and Fisher Store in Denver and, - And model.

No - Kidding.

- Yeah.

- So she modeled dresses and one of the, the modeling agents or whoever ran the store said that she was a quote.

Perfect.

36.

- Hmm.

Maybe that's why the women didn't like to see her coming in the middle of the night out to the, the ranch there.

She was a here comes a model walking into telling my husband to take his shirt off.

Just, just the, the thought of the things that they went through and - Yeah.

- Decided to go through.

But she stayed here and, and then continued and lived in Rons then for the rest of her life.

- Yeah, she, her and her husband ended up running a hotel for a little bit in Colorado and she still did some modeling here and there.

She did keep her medical license active, but they always did keep Rollins as their primary home.

Okay.

And then throughout her career she was very passionate about keeping up on the current medical trends of the day as her life progressed and, you know, offering advice or while she didn't practice daily, she would be more of an advisor and, and did hospital inspections and, and kind of a consultant role at that point.

- Yeah.

Well you got some money from the state of Wyoming to mount this exhibit.

The exhibit itself is, is on a video screen interactive thing where viewers can make of it what they want, to an extent.

Was that your initial concept for it as well?

- We wanted to incorporate all of the female doctors - Yeah.

- Into her lifetime.

And being that she lived a hundred years, we kind of laid that as the baseline for her life.

So we went 1860, which was five years before she was born, but the really, the beginning of the Civil War up until 1970, so covers about 110 years of medical advancements.

So as you travel the timeline you can say, oh, let's see what was happening in 1913.

And then you get Dr.

Susan Lale peacock and her life - And there she is here.

- Yep.

- And then Dr.

Heath's, - Dr.

Heath is - Always there.

She's always there to compare in time.

Yeah.

- And then let's say you wanna know more, you just hit bio, pull up a brief bio biography and a picture of, of the doctor in question.

It's not just the, the doctors themselves.

It's kind of what was happening in American and world medical history at the time.

And so you can her, like I said, Heath's life is still on here.

You can do broad medical advancements.

So for instance, 1870s and 1880s, we were talking about the germ revolution.

And then you can, this one is a little more comprehensive.

You can go down and you can see different education reforms, world War I and then x-rays and field hospitals were being more standardized antibiotics, for instance in the 1930s.

And then this one massive wins in medical history.

So these are specific dates where something happened that was a big deal.

So 1928 discovery of penicillin.

- Right.

- 1937.

First US Blood Bank 55, the polio vaccine double helix in 1953.

- So while she didn't, wasn't practicing all of these things, she saw them all, oh yeah, antibiotics arrived, rapid development of vaccinations and just huge test tube style research that just went by leaps and bounds that she never got to do.

But I'll bet she must've appreciated it.

- Oh, totally.

- Well, Tom Sek, this has really been interesting.

I knew it would be, and I congratulate you on this great idea you had for helping Rollins Carbon County participate in America two 50.

We're doing a few shows in 2026 about this kind of effort.

Yours is unique.

Thanks for hosting us here and for being with us on Wyoming Chronicle.

- Thanks.

I appreciate it.