High Desert Heroine: Martha Cobb Hindman

Martha Alice Taylor didn't have a long childhood. Born in Oregon in 1857 to parents who came across the Oregon Trail, she married her 24-year-old neighbor Alfred Cobb in California when she was just 13 years old.

By the time she was 14 her first baby, Newt Cobb was born. She had two more sons by the time she was 17. When she was 18, her growing family headed north back to her home state of Oregon. Two more children joined the brood as another child died.

By 1881, the Cobbs and their four children were the second family to homestead near Sisters. They lived for two years in a 12- by 16-foot cab...