The 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment was yesterday, Tuesday, Aug. 18.

The L. Alan Cruikshank River of Time Museum is commemorating the centennial of women’s suffrage in the U.S. with “Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence, a Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition.”

Women in Arizona earned the right to vote in 1912 as part of the state’s admission to the country as the nation’s 48th state. The right did not come easy.

Arizona at that time had a population of 205,000, living across 114,000-square-miles of desert, mountains, valleys and forests with few roads or telegraph lines to convey messages or plan strategies.

That didn’t stop Frances Munds and Pauline O’Neill. The two met with strong resistance, but they developed a strategy that worked against politicians who refused to endorse suffrage, gaining the support from all five political parties active in Arizona at the time. Munds went on to become Arizona’s first female state senator.

Fountain Hills has been the beneficiary of the work that went in to the 19th Amendment. Since incorporation, the community has had three women mayors, as well as a number of women who have sat or are now sitting on the Town Council. The suffragette movement lasted more than 80 years and involved thousands of women in every state. Leaders such as Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt struggled for years, giving speeches, attending meetings, rallies and marches, organizing and educating for the dream that finally came true in 1920.

The exhibition is designed in collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery. The project is supported by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative and curated by museum Board Member Sharon Brodhun. It is the museum’s first all-virtual exhibit and can be viewed at the museum’s website, rotmuseum.org.

The exhibit will remain online through Sept. 30.