Hallie Stillwell was a West Texas Pioneer and ranchwoman, a schoolteacher, journalist, and entrepreneur in the Big Bend Area. Hallie Crawford married Roy Stillwell, twenty years her senior, on July 29, 1918, and moved into his primitive small one-room cabin, which was said to be about the size of a formal dining room in a modern home, on the Stillwell Ranch. She became a ranch hand working alongside her husband. She later wrote in her memoirs that she learned to live, work, and act like a man. Hallie branded and herded cattle, mended fences, and hunted game, all while raising two sons and a daughter. The drought of 1930 almost destroyed the ranch, but through determination and assistance from the Drought Relief Service, the Stillwells were able to avoid bankruptcy.

In 1948 Roy was killed in a roll-over truck accident. To help make ends meet, she lectured on life as a Texas woman rancher, managed a coffee shop, clerked for the city, worked in a flower shop, handled public relations for the local chamber of commerce and served as justice of the peace. Her literary success also helped the ranch survive through a drought when she started writing a column for the Alpine Avalanche in 1955. Inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 1992, Stillwell died two months and two days shy of her 100th birthday.