#236: Split City, U.S.A.
In 19th-century America, unhappily married couples faced divorce laws that varied wildly by state. Some states only allowed suits for \u201cdivorce of room and board\u201d\u2014but not the end of a marriage. In New York, divorce was permitted only in cases of proven adultery; South Carolina banned it entirely. But in South Dakota, things were different, and by the 1890s, people were flocking to Sioux Falls to take advantage of the laxest divorce laws in the country. In particular, the women seeking separation caught the most attention, as historian and senior Atlas Obscura editor April White writes in her new book, The Divorce Colony. These women\u2014usually wealthy, almost always white, and trailing newspaper reporters\u2014dared to challenge the status quo barely a generation after married women had won the right to own property, and well before they achieved the vote.
Go beyond the episode:
- April White\u2019s The Divorce Colony: How Women Revolutionized Marriage and Found Freedom on the American Frontier
- Read the Atavist article that started it all
- Meet the women profiled in the book
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