Julia Archibald Holmes

Julia Archibald Holmes
Women’s Rights Activist
1838 - 1887
INDUCTED 2014

Julia “Anna” Archibald Holmes was in 1858 the first recorded white woman to climb Pikes Peak, Colorado’s most famous mountain, while wearing the controversial women’s “reform dress.”

She published her account and became known as “the Bloomer Girl on Pikes Peak.” Her journey was a public statement on women’s equality, and her record is an early primary source for Colorado historians. Holmes and her husband were part of the Lawrence Party from Kansas, who made the two-month trek to Colorado from Kansas on foot during the 1858 Colorado Gold Rush.

“Nearly every one tried to discourage me from attempting it, but I believed that I should succeed; and now, here I am, and I feel that I would not have missed this glorious sight for anything at all.” — Julia Archibald Holmes at the summit of Pikes Peak, August 5, 1858