Utah women made history in 1870 by voting in the nation's first election held with equal suffrage for women. The end of the Civil War in 1865 and the arrival of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 had eroded Utah Territory's isolation and accelerated its entry onto the national political stage. In 1870, the vast majority of Utah residents belonged to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. With the influex of new arrivals who were not Latter-day Saints, local tensions escalated between Utah's religious and political majority and the small but increasing minority. These shifting dynamics helped turn attention to women's suffrage in Utah.

As the post-Civil War nation considered granting suffrage to African American men, intensifying debates over women's voting rights divided the national suffrage movement and became entangled with the rising national anti-polygamy movement. Arguments both supporting and opposing women's suffrage in Utah were linked with the controversial practice of polygamy from the start.

. . . .Neither pawns nor militants, many of Utah's leading Latter-day Saint women responded to these dynamics by seeking a stronger political voice to join with Latter-day Saint men in defending their religious practices. In January 1870, a large gathering of Relief Society women adopted a resolution calling for the right to vote. The next week, they led a mass meeting of several thousand women to protest a congressional anti-polygamy bill. Just weeks after that powerful display, the Utah Territoral Legislature unanimously passed a law giving voting rights to Utah's female citizens. Wyoming Territory had passed women's suffrage in December 1869, so Utah Territory became the second in the nation to extend equal voting rights to women. Since Utah held both municipal and general elections before Wyoming's next election, Utah women gained the distinction of voting first. They exercised their newfound right in large numbers.