The Daily Alaska Empire

MRS. PULLEN
OF SKAGWAY
FAME RETURNS

Colorful Alaskan Ready for New Experiences in Territory

She saw Skagway become a city over night; she saw Soapy Smith shot, watched fortunes come and go. Today, returning to her Alaskan home after three months in the States, Mrs. Harriet Pullen of Skagway's Pullen House is waiting to see her forty-first Alaskan summer bring with it the Territory's greatest tourist season on record.

Arriving in Juneau aboard the Yukon this morning and visiting with friends every moment of her stay here, Mrs. Pullen is returning to her Skagway resort following a visit of the past three months in Seattle and Portland.

She has not missed a summer in Alaska since arriving at Skagway, alone and unknown, in 1897. It was then that she watched buildings grow - heard hammers pounding throughout the light summer nights, and saw a hundred, then ten thousand, then twenty thousand disembark at the Lynn Canal port.

Taking a few moments while she visited with the Rev. A. P. Kashevaroff in the Territorial museum this afternoon, Mrs. Pullen reminisced of her first uncertain venture into cooking when she answered "I'll try" in quest of a position. Today the Pullen House is known throughout the States, praised from one summer generation of tourists to the next.

Seated in the Rev. Kashevaroff's office, her face alight with memories, she told of witnessing the killing of Soapy Smith, notorious bandit and confidence man of the gold rush days before the turn of the century.

"I looked out my window one day," she said, "and down by the wharf saw hundreds of people rushing around. My little boy and I went down and found that Soapy had just robbed a man as he came over the summit with a poke of gold."

"There was a tenseness in the crowd which was frightening. Suddenly we heard someone say, 'Halt,' to a man ahead. The man ahead turned around. It was Soapy Smith.

'My God, don't shoot.' Soapy said. But the shot was fired, and missed. Soapy fired and wounded his grim opponent, but the next shot from the wounded man brought the fearless gangster down with a bullet in his heart."

"I will always remember that terrible scene," Mrs. Pullen said. "But even more, I remember what my little boy said, as he discovered who the dead man was. 'Oh, mother, that is the kind mister who always gave us candy,' he cried."

One of Alaska's most colorful figures, Mrs. Pullen is widely known and many of her experiences have been recorded in "Alaskans All" by Barrett Willoughby. Years ago, before Governor John W. Troy had come to Alaska, she and "John" were close friends in western Washington where he lived in Port Angeles and she was owner of the country known as La Push.

Approving of Juneau as "a fine city," she was nevertheless eager to board the Yukon for Skagway, where a summer of new experiences awaits.