Harriet Pullen Who Answered the Call of the Wild by Linda Harris Sittig

What I have learned from the 90+ women I have researched for this blog, is that all of them faced adversity, and striving to overcome the obstacles is what forged them into becoming strong women.

Harriet Pullen is no exception.

Born in Wisconsin in 1860, she grew up with a father who was always looking for a way to make money. He moved the family to the Dakotas where they faced devastating droughts, swarms of locusts, and unimaginable floods.  Next, they moved to the state of Washington to gamble in land ventures, but with little success.

While in La Push, Washington, Dan Pullen, a local land speculator, befriended the family. Despite the age difference of 18 years, he proposed to Harriet in 1881, and she agreed to marry him.

At first, Dan made a lot of money, and Harriet escaped the poverty of her childhood. They had four children in quick succession, but then several of Dan’s land deals were found to be fraudulent. The legal battles that ensued left the family bankrupt. Dan solved the problem by walking out one day and never returning.

Now Harriet was left with four children and no immediate means of income. She had read of the Klondike Gold Rush in Alaska and decided there had to be available jobs.

In 1897, she asked a trusted friend to take care of her four children (hello, that friend deserves a halo) and Harriet boarded a ship bound for Skagway, Alaska.

When she arrived, she was 37 years old, had only $7.00 in her purse, and possessed only two skills: cooking and driving a team of horses.

Although Skagway was nothing more than a small town of muddy streets, it was the doorway to the Klondike Gold Rush. Stampeders (men seeking to find gold) flooded the streets.

And what those men needed most, Harriet concluded, was a decent meal.

She became hired as a cook and in her off-hours wandered the streets collecting tin cans. Then she brought the tin home, hammered it into pie plates and set up her own business selling small apple pies to hungry would-be miners.

She knew that after decent food, what the men needed next was pack horses to help them traverse the treacherous trails leading up through the mountains to the Klondike.

Harriet sent for the seven horses she still owned back in Washington and opened up a freight business. That proved lucrative, earning her as much as $25.00 per day (equivalent to $750.00 today), allowing her to send for her children.

But then in 1899 construction began on the White Pass and Yukon Railway. Miners willingly paid to ride the rails instead of climbing with a 100- pound backpack up the treacherous 20-mile White Pass trail with an elevation of 2888 feet.

Harriet’s freight business dried up.

Determined not to be affected by this turn of events, Harriet calculated that wealthy tourists would be willing to visit Alaska.

Knowing that she would have to provide completely different lodgings than what was currently available in Skagway, she used all her savings and bought Captain Moore’s Victorian homestead and turned it into the Pullen House Hotel.

She advertised luxury linens, hot baths, and served all her meals on Captain Moore’s china and silver.

As a hotel proprietor, she banked on the idea that well-to-do tourists from the ‘lower states’ would pay to finance an Alaskan vacation. She began to advertise her hotel and soon tourists arrived in Skagway, often on the newly popular mode of travel – cruise ships.

Within a few short years, Harriet became a wealthy woman. And surprise, surprise, Dan Pullen suddenly appeared back in her life. According to local folklore, she funded an expedition so he could explore the Yukon looking for gold. They never reunited.

Harriet lived out her life in the hotel, dying at the age of 87 in 1947 and buried in the small cemetery that lies on the edge of the White Pass trail. The same trail that a failed miner, but later a successful novelist, wrote about in his books White Fang and Call of the Wild – Jack London.

Today only the chimney remains of Harriet’s hotel and the legends of a young woman who arrived with $7.00 in her pocket and spent the next 50 years helping to put Alaskan tourism on the map.

Thank you to singer Laura Sable, who shared Harriet’s story with me.

I give a disclaimer here to all the dates listed since every written source I consulted listed varying years.

But, hey. A strong woman anyway.

Stay tuned to a mid-month blog where I will be sharing about my newest strong woman novel, Counting Crows. It should be available by October 20th!

~ Linda:)