Dayton’s First Lady of Dentistry
Before Dayton was known for mining, mills, and mischief, it had a woman with a drill and a dream.
Meet Helen Rulison Shipley, born right here in Dayton on Jul. 23, 1870, and destined to become Nevada’s first female dentist.
In an era when women were expected to sew, not scrape plaque, Helen packed her bags for the big city, graduating from the University of California, San Francisco in the 1890s with a degree in dentistry, a first for any Nevadan woman.
She opened her practice among the rough-and-tumble mining camps of Goldfield and Tonopah, where the average patient was a miner with more gold dust in his gums than teeth in his mouth. Imagine a petite woman in a long skirt, setting up her dental chair between saloons and assay offices, calm, professional, and entirely unfazed by the wild West chaos around her.
When she wasn’t fixing frontier smiles, Helen became an advocate for women’s education and professional work. She paved the way for generations of Nevada women to step into roles once thought “impossible.”
By the time she retired, she had worked in Reno, raised a family, and proved, one patient at a time, that Dayton women could do anything.
So the next time you’re in town, and you see someone flash a confident smile, tip your hat to Helen Rulison Shipley – the woman who made sure Nevada could grin with pride.
