Bold Spirit - Linda Hunt [27]
The “eastern parties” wrote up a formal contract with certain stipulations and a seven-month deadline that Helga agreed to and signed. Required to leave with only $5 apiece, they needed to support themselves “without begging” along the way, earning enough for food, lodging, and replacement clothes and shoes. It seems likely their required visits to political leaders in the state capitals would be interpreted as living proof of the economic capability and physical strength of ordinary women. Helga and Clara’s actions could speak volumes.13
Helga planned to take extensive notes along the way and write a book of their adventures in hopes that the contracting parties might help sell this to the highest bidder for publication. This did not appear to be a stipulation of the sponsoring party, rather it was Helga’s own attempt to increase her income.
From the beginning, they designed their monumental effort to be a public event. The first instruction from the sponsors required going to a portrait studio in Spokane for a formal photograph to send to the New York World newspaper. This progressive Pulitzer paper featured a weekly news column entitled “Women of the Week: Some extraordinary doings of the New Sisterhood in Unusual Fields of Feminine Effort.” In the April 26, 1896 column, an announcement of the intentions of the “Two Women’s Great Tramp” to walk from Spokane to New York appeared, along with a formal portrait of Helga and Clara. Noting that the women will break all records in the line of pedestrians and will travel rapidly, with very light equipment, the reporter alluded to the high-stake risks or folly of this transcontinental trek with the assessment, “They intend to write up their adventures afterwards if they survive the experiment.”14
(following pages) Helga and Clara had this photograph taken in a Spokane studio in April 1896 to send to the New York World announcing their upcoming trip. It served as the basis for a photoengraving included in the article “Two Women’s Great Tramp,” which appeared in the New York World on April 25, 1896.
Photograph courtesy Portch/Bahr Family Photograph Collection.
Photoengraving courtesy General Research Division,
The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.
Detail of this photograph on this page.
Two Women’s Great Tramp.
The Spokane newspaper offices saw the startling New York World picture and article and published their first acknowledgment of the Estby women’s trip in the May 4, 1896, issue of the Daily Chronicle. Entitled “Tramp to New York: An Eastern Paper Tells of Spokane Women’s Plans,” it told how Mrs. H. Estby and daughter are the “latest among the new women of this section of the country to attract attention in the east.”15
For some reason, Helga gave the Spokane city address of 1725 Pacific Avenue where their children worked occasionally as domestics and gardeners, probably while attending a Spokane high school.16 This distinctive home of the Rutter family, a leading Spokane businessman and his wife, was designed by a prestigious Northwest architect, Kirkland Cutter, and located in Spokane’s wealthiest neighborhood. Because of this, the newspaper ended with a note of skepticism. “The story is an interesting one and the only fault found with it at this end of the line is that no person named Estby lives, or ever has lived at the address given nor can such a name be found in any of the city directories.”17
To accept this wager meant Helga and Clara needed to attempt something no unescorted women before them had ever accomplished. They must undertake the hazards of crossing a continent still made up of vast stretches of wild frontier country and lofty rugged mountain passes; traverse through several Indian reservations; weather the potential ravages of blistering heat and freezing snow; walk unprotected