Hattie, I don’t think you should go alone, said my father with a worried look.

This caused considerable consternation in my family. When my sweetheart of high school days telegraphed from Telluride, Colorado, saying he had found a position as assayer at the Japan Flora Mine, he asked me to meet him in Denver to be married. I was late for my wedding-so late that the date on three hundred engraved announcements had to be forever wrong. Tomboy Bride endures as a classic of the region to this day as it captures in heart-felt emotion and vivid detail the personal account of Harriet Backus, a true pioneer of the West. With a new foreword by award-winning author Pam Houston, this 50th anniversary edition also includes previously unpublished black and white photographs documenting Harriet's journey. As she and George move from Telluride’s Tomboy Mine to the rugged coast of British Columbia, to the town of Elk City, Idaho, and then back to Colorado’s Leadville, Harriet paints a poignant picture of a world centered around mining, sharing amusing and often challenging experiences as a woman of the era. Together, the couple ventured forth to discover mining town life at the turn of the twentieth century, adjusting to dizzying elevation heights of 11,500 feet and all the hardships that come with it: limited water, rationed food supplies, lack of medical care, difficulty in travel, avalanches, and many more.

In 1906 at the age of twenty, Harriet Fish hopped on a train from Oakland, California, to the San Juan Mountains of Colorado in search of a new life as the bride of assayer George Backus. A Colorado favorite, Tomboy Bride presents the first-hand account of a young pioneer woman and her life in a rough and tumble mining town of the Old West.

Tomboy Bride by Harriet Fish Backus