"Known the state over and beyond as Montana's cattle queen...she is the only woman cattle raiser and shipper the state ever had." -Anaconda (Montana) Standard, Dec. 15, 1912

"Collins...witnessed the work of vigilantes...detailed descriptions of placer mining and cattle ranching." - The Birch Creek Hangings and other Montana Tales (2020)

"Elizabeth earned her nickname by driving a herd of cattle from near Choteau to...Great Falls...a fellow cowboy proclaimed her cattle queen of the Great West." -Montana Place Names (2009)

"A great Cattle Queen ... rare and perfect Western type ... stirring, eventful life reads like a thrilling novel." -Sketch: A Journal (1899)

How did 2012 Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame Inductee Elizabeth May Smith Collins (1844-1921) earn the nickname "Cattle Queen of Montana" and earn the respect of cowboys in an industry dominate solely by men?

The history of this woman's stirring, eventful life found in her 1894 autobiography "Cattle Queen of Montana" reads like a thrilling Western, except Libby is the "real deal" and her autobiography is "real stuff" rather than a work of fiction.

As Libby describes, her book contains narratives of thrilling adventures, recitals of stirring events, tales of hardships and privations, anecdotes of personal experience, and descriptions of the plains, the mines, cattle raising industry, and other features of Western Life, gleaned from a forty years' residence in the far West.