Ruby El Hult papers, 1860-2008

Ruby El Hult was a prolific writer of Pacific Northwest history. Her works cover topics such as railroads, conservation, forest fires, steamboats, and the Olympic Mountains. Ruby El Hult was born in Belgrove, Idaho in 1912. She graduated from Lewis and Clark High School in Spokane in 1932, and Northwestern Business College two years later. She took writing classes at the University of Washington during 1945-46. After holding various secretarial positions between 1942 and 1949, she served as assistant editor of the Washington State Journal of Nursing in Seattle from 1949 to 1952. During this time, she completed a number of short stories for writing classes she took between 1924 and 1953.

In the early 1950s, Hult began a freelancing writing career that continued for decades, publishing articles and opinion pieces concerning Pacific Northwest historical and conservation issues. She also began to publish a number of books on the Pacific Northwest, beginning with Steamboats in the Timber in 1952 (a second edition was published in 1968). That was followed by Untamed Olympics in 1954 (a second edition was published in 1971), and Lost Mines and Treasures of the Pacific Northwest in 1957. A sequel to that book, Treasure Hunting Northwest, was published in 1971. In 1960, both Northwest Disaster: Avalanche and Fire and Guns of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (an expanded version of the June 6, 1955 article in Guns Magazine, "The Arms that Won an Empire") were published. The second edition of her book, Herb Crisler in the Olympic Mountain Wilds (originally published in 1977), was published in 1992. Her last book, An Olympic Mountain Enchantment, was published in 1989. She donated the majority of her original manuscripts, notes, photos, and correspondence to the UW and WSU libraries after 1959, and her manuscript collection remains one of the more popular at WSU. According to Trevor Bond, head of the Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections section at WSU, "She worked on areas that are still of enduring interest. This is one of those research collections that is attractive to the general public."

During this time, Hult maintained ties with a small group of Pacific Northwest women writers, historians and book lovers, some of whom she had met in the late 1930s. Up through 1980s and 1990s, Hult regularly corresponded with these women, who were both friends and professional colleagues. These included Hazel Corbeill, Eleanor Garst, Martha Livingston and Elizabeth Marion Saunders. In 1980, Hult and Saunders published their correspondence over the years in a compendium called The Cockalorum Chronicles: New Words Between Old Friends: Correspondence of Elizabeth Marion Saunders and Ruby El Hult.

Ruby El Hult was married first to S. John Sether, who died in 1959. She married her second husband, Raymond L. McAndrew, in 1961. He died in 1978. Ruby died in 2008 at the age of 95.