Like many who journeyed north in search of gold and new horizons, Mollie Walsh departed from Seattle aboard a steamship. In her case, it was the SS Quadra, which set sail on October 9, 1897, bound for the port of Skagway in the Alaska Territory. It was in this bustling seaside town that she helped establish the community’s first church. However, Skagway (or Dyea, according to an alternate version of her story) was only a temporary stop on her journey.
In March 1898, Mollie left Skagway and traveled the trail with a couple headed to Dawson to open a business. The group was well equipped for the journey, but Mollie was moved by the plight of the many men she saw suffering along the White Pass Trail, lacking adequate provisions and gear. While her traveling companions continued on, Mollie established a new tent site at a location called Log Cabin, along the trail leading to the summit of White Pass. There, she ministered to those in need. Mollie had come to Alaska hoping to earn money to support her elderly Irish mother and two sisters back in Montana, but it was her desire to help others that shaped her path.
“Her reputation grew throughout the region by those she had saved, who came to refer to her as ‘The Angel of White Pass.’”
In the months that followed, Mollie offered countless travelers free food and shelter—hot coffee and a warm place out of the freezing wind and snow of the Alaskan wilderness. Her reputation grew throughout the region, thanks to those she had helped, who came to refer to her as “The Angel of White Pass.” One such traveler was John “Packer Jack” Newman, who transported supplies over the pass with teams of pack horses and mules. During a snowstorm, Newman stumbled into her tent one night seeking refuge. He had lost a mitten, and one of his hands was nearly frozen from exposure. Mollie nursed him back to health, offering soup and coffee, and treated his hand with snow to improve circulation and prevent frostbite. Like many others, the packer lived to tell the tale of his salvation at the hands of Mollie Walsh.
While working as a waitress in Dawson, Mollie met another pack train operator named Mike Bartlett. The young couple married and eventually moved to Seattle, leaving the gold fields behind to start a new life together—but it was not to be. Mollie died an untimely death at the hands of Bartlett on October 27, 1902.
Mollie was not forgotten by those she had cared for in the Great White North. Years later, Jack Newman commissioned a memorial sculpture bust of her likeness in cold bronze, which today stands in Mollie Walsh Park in Skagway. It is a lasting reminder that Alaska was once a frontier explored by both men and women—a home to native peoples and pioneers alike. A way of life that, in many respects, has remained unchanged: subject to the power of the natural environment and all that it holds for new arrivals, or for those who have lived for centuries along the continent’s shores, high in the mountains, and across the tundra and ice.
