Archive of 39 Letters to Dora Keen, Iconic Female Mountaineer 1902-1914

An extensive archive of 39 handwritten letters totaling 148 pages written to Dora Keen, a female American alpinist, traveler, and educator. In 1912 Dora Keen became the first person to reach the 16.390 foot summit of Mount Blackburn and the first woman to mountaineer in Alaska. The archive span the years 1902-1914 with one letter from 1952. Dora Keen held many records among men and women in her sport. She was the first non-native Alaskan to use dogs on an expedition, the first to camp in snow caves and the first to make a prolonged night ascent. At five feet tall, she said her height made no difference from the top of a mountain. In the history of mountaineering, Keen's name remains quite famous.

Mountaineering became a recreational sport in the Alps during the 1800s, a male-dominated field with Keen among its notable exceptions. Her sister writes frequently, praising Keen's adventurousness "I'm truly thankful to have one sister who is neither an old maid nor a bride, but a thorough woman of the world," she writes. Reads another, "How I did love your letter and pleased that the ocean no longer divides your body from mine! What a wonderful chance is open to you next. I congratulate you with all my soul."

The letters give a strong sense of what an outlier Keen was among her family and friends as well as the impression her example made. "I thought of you last night because I went for the first time to our Young Women's Club. I thought of the time I went with you and Lourie to yours so long ago. Do you remember and your motto, 'Nothing is too much trouble?'" Keen was raised in high society IN Philadelphia and worked in philanthropic organizations upon graduation from Bryn Mawr College, supporting fair labor and child protection. "I appreciate very much indeed your thought of me in connection with the Public Education Association Secretaryship which you are resigning and which it occurs to you might be filled by one of my cousins," reads one letter. Keen's love of travel, ultimately, became her life's work. She traveled extensively across North America, from Alaska to Panama, both coasts of South America as well as its southern region, across Asia and North Africa. "It was a great surprise to hear that you had sailed for Europe, as our last news had been from Ascension," writes one friend trying to keep up. "I can't imagine a person who might spend a summer in Europe deliberately coming back to America." Keen made frequent visits to Europe where she began mountaineering in the Alps making eight ascents of first-class peaks from 1909-1910. One letter from 1910 reads, "I am realizing what these next hard days and weeks mean or may mean to you-my love always."

Her family and friends are tender, eager to learn more of Keen's adventures, "I know you dislike compliments-well, my honey your little friend loves you and longs to hear more." They weigh in, too, on Keen's romantic life, showing unusual support for her independence. "From your letter I should fancy you have too many Suitors. Can't you eliminate mentally the first-say twelve, and judge yourself by contemplating 'What Remains.' In my advice to you there is more anxiety than you dream. I blundered so fearfully myself. If you have any doubts, dearie, take the advice of an old idiot and don't don't don't 'monkey with the buzz-saw!'" One letter, possibly from just such a buzz-saw, reads "When you said at dinner on Sunday you liked to be taken for French, I turned a critical eye, a very critical eye upon you, and the more I looked the more thoroughly my critical eye approved, and when we are all sitting in the dark afterward my critical eye astonished itself with a cleverer bit of visualizing than it often attains to and proved a lot more." A letter from her sister discourages a match, reading "[Papa] agrees entirely with me, however, in disapproving of it in every respect unless you are desperately in love with the man and the more we think about it the less we like it."

Keen remained unmarried until she met George Handy, a German adventurer living in Alaska, in 1911 when she first attempted Mount Blackburn. He was with her when she reached the summit and the two married in 1916 when she was 45 years old. Her choices in all aspects of her life defied social norms showing a personality best suited to making her own way. Writes one friend, "What a fascinating time you must be having, to judge from the pictures on the postcards...and I can well understand that you prefer to remain in such a nature rather than return to civilization."

A fascinating glimpse inside the private life of a woman making history at astonishing heights.