What makes the laws exceptional is that they were enacted by an all-woman council elected by voters in the southern Utah town on the state line with Arizona.

The council was the subject of a lecture Friday night at the Kanab Library by Brigham Young University researcher Kylie Nelson Turley, whose presentation was part of the Utah Humanities Council "Roads" Scholar program.

Turley said the all-woman council was led by Mary Wooley Chamberlain, a polygamous wife who acted as the mayor as well as one of the five members of the council. The women took their jobs seriously, even though it is unclear exactly how they got on the ballot, said Turley.

"Neither Chamberlain nor the others campaigned," said Turley, adding none actively sought to get elected during the 1911 election. Their cause was helped by the fact that women had the vote in Utah.

She said three "ditch loafers" are suspected by some of putting the names on the ballots, while others believe it was a joke on the part of the town's young men who were displeased on how the older men were running the town.

When told they had won, the women were disgusted by the prospect of governing the town. But with encouragement from residents and family, they took control.

The women, all members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, met only twice in the City Hall, preferring to conduct business at the home of a council member after Sunday sacrament meeting and always began with an opening prayer.

"The minutes of the meetings don't record the personal feelings of the women," said Turley. "But do show they were strong minded and civic minded."

The laws they passed included not only fines for using slingshots, referred to as "flippers," but impounding loose livestock, regulating gambling and activities on Sunday.

They also targeted liquor, described as an "evil terror to the town," except for medicinal purposes, and wrote the U.S. postmaster asking that he forbid shipping of alcohol to the town from Marysvale to the north. The postmaster complied but liquor continued to find its way into town through other means.

The all-woman council took a lead from the Progressive movement in the country and built bridges over canals and ditches, cleaned up unsanitary conditions in the town, built a dike in Little Canyon and plotted a cemetery.

By the next election two years later, all but one woman had decided to not run again. The one who ran was re-elected but later resigned.

Although Chamberlain was not the first woman to serve as a mayor of a U.S. municipality, as far as Turley can tell the group was the first all-woman council in the United States.

mhavnes@sltrib.com