Robin Flinchum

Robin Flinchum is an award-winning journalist and historian whose work focuses

on uncovering overlooked and misrepresented stories of the early American West.

Trained in journalism at San Francisco State University, she brings

investigative rigor, careful fact-checking, and a strong ethical sensibility to

historical research, applying modern reporting standards to nineteenth-century

sources.

She is the author of Red Light Women of Death Valley, the first book to document

in depth the lives of women who worked as prostitutes in the region’s early

mining camps. That research reshaped the historical record and directly led to

the creation of permanent museum exhibits, including a Lola Travis display at

the Eastern California Museum and the first Death Valley Women’s History exhibit

at the Shoshone Museum.

A longtime independent journalist, Flinchum covered the Death Valley region for

fifteen years and has written historical features for Nevada Magazine. She lives

and works in the desert West.