Betty Pellett

Elizabeth Eyre Pellet
Activist and Politician
1887 - 1976
INDUCTED 2016

After performing on Broadway and marching in New York as a suffragette, Pellet moved to Colorado and became the first female House Minority Leader.

Betty was also the first woman in Colorado to run for Congress. Pellet and her husband operated mines around the tiny, remote town of Rico, Colorado. She is credited with saving the railroad and the Galloping Goose (a truck on rails) for the towns in southwestern Colorado. Without the railroad, mineral supplies would have been out of reach and Rico would have become a ghost town. Betty also championed legislation for education, children services, and the diagnosis and care of disabled children, earning her the title, “The Woman with the Fighting Heart.”

“The first time I went into a mine, I bumped my head on a beam and fell. [My husband ] told me if I was going to be around mines, I’d have to learn to pick myself up. It was the kindest thing he ever did for me.” — Betty Pellet