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PRAISE FOR Tomboy Bride
“It’s hard to describe just how much of a legacy Harriet Backus left with Tomboy Bride and her vivid and descriptive memories of Telluride and the surrounding region… a great read that does much to explain the unique character of Telluride.” —Kiernan Lannon, Executive Director, Telluride Historical Museum, An Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution
“#1 on the annual bestseller list at our store for over a decade. An amazing story.” —Daiva Chesonis, Co-owner, Between the Covers Bookstore, Telluride, CO
“In her book Tomboy Bride, we experience her delight when she first inspected her 6-room ‘palace,’ with electricity and running water. She not only entertains, but also provides useful and keenly preserved details about the well-equipped company store; the segregated housing for the Chinese, Japanese and the white crews; and the crusher house and mill.”
—The Northern Miner
“… an interesting book that records the hardships, tragedies and triumphs of a young woman in the colorful era of the mining boom.”
—Annals of Wyoming
“… Charming book … entertaining and informative.”
—The New Mexican
TOMBOY BRIDE
Harriet Fish Backus
TOMBOY BRIDE
One Woman’s Personal Account of Life in the Mining Camps of the West
50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
With a new foreword by Pam Houston
© 1969 by Harriet Fish Backus
Book compilation © 2019 by West Margin Press
First published by Pruett Publishing Company in 1977.
First printing of the 50th Anniversary Edition 2019.
This edition
ISBN 9781513262055 (softbound) | 9781513262062 (hardbound) | 9781513262079 (e-book)
Library of Congress Control Number is on file.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews and articles.
Back cover image credits: LiliGraphie/Shutterstock.com; MM_photos/Shutterstock.com
Printed in China.
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West Margin Press
is an imprint of
Proudly distributed by Ingram Publisher Services.
WEST MARGIN PRESS
Publishing Director: Jennifer Newens
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Editor: Olivia Ngai
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TO MY HUSBAND, THE GREATEST OF MANY BLESSINGS.
Sharing these experiences with him has been the main reason for the happiness I found in them.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD by PAM HOUSTON
PART IV: Leadville, City In The Clouds
AFTERWORD by ROBERT G. WALTON
BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
FOREWORD
These vertebrae of the monster included the giants Uncompahgre, Wetterhorn, Red Cloud, Sneffles, Wilson, Sunshine, and Lizard Head, each one higher than fourteen thousand feet, soaring to heaven like spires, and surrounded by peaks of eleven, twelve and thirteen thousand feet. They held our gaze through the snow falling in large soft flakes, fuzzing our faces, whitening the robes.
When I wrote the first foreword to Tomboy Bride, back in 1996, I was relatively new to the San Juan Mountains. Three years prior, I had dared myself to buy a 120-acre homestead very near the headwaters of the Rio Grande, less than 50 miles as the crow flies, (but more than 200 as the car drives) from the Tomboy Mine above Telluride where Harriet Fish Backus spent the most memorable days of her life. Memories of the mining days are all around us on my side of the mountain too, in the ruined ore houses and caved-in shafts, in the names of the town’s businesses: Kentucky Belle Market, Tommyknockers Tavern, and Amethyst Emporium, and in the stories of the miners, who are descendents of other miners, and who still worked the mines here until they closed in 1985. In my first foreword I confessed to a fantasy that one day, while cleaning out the barn or digging in the garden, I might uncover a diary or a bundle of letters, some written message left from the past that neither time nor weather nor packrats had carried away.
My ranch was homesteaded by a man named John Pinckley, who left it to his son Bob. Bob lived on the ranch from the time he was a young boy until his death in 1966. Bob’s cabin was in decent shape when I bought the place, but over the years it began to rise up from its own center and eventually threatened to split at the top like an over-baked cupcake. I traded my 1964 F100 truck to a local contractor named RJ Mann for a new foundation. When RJ pulled up the floorboards, he found the treasure trove I’d been hoping for: messages from the past in the form of an old harmonica, a pipe, a pair of scissors, a pocket watch, empty tins of tobacco, several glass marbles, each of them a different shade of green. There was a well-preserved insert from a package of Super Anahist Antihistamine Cough Syrup with Vitamin C, several yellowed card stock receipts from a company in Minneapolis where Pinckley shipped the furs from his trapping business (including one for the sale of a house cat), a label from Prince Albert Crimp Cut in a can, and two beautifully rendered drawings of belted kingfishers, one that had graced a 25-yard container of Martin’s Highest Quality Enameled fishing line: (test 21 pounds), and the other a “collectable” insert from a box of Arm and Hammer Baking Soda. Objects from the past hold the energy of their owners, and finding them feels like getting a letter from a long-lost friend. Buying the ranch had always felt less like a decision and more like a calling. For as long as I can remember, belted kingfishers have been my favorite bird.
The last time I read Tomboy Bride I was still in the honeymoon stage of owning my ranch, in love with the star-filled nights and silent mornings, with the