Josephine "Josie" Reed Pearl reportedly sold her first mine by the age of thirteen. She went to Creede, Colorado, where she married mining engineer Lane Pearl, and they traveled the West to places such as Goldfield. Lane later went to work at Ward, near Ely, where he died of the Spanish Flu in 1918. Josie operated boarding houses, worked as a waitress, nursed sick miners, and continued prospecting. She was known for helping wayward boys, whom she called "penitentiary fodder." She later settled at the edge of the Black Rock Desert west of Leonard Creek, where she lived alone while working her claims and prospecting. Journalist Ernie Pyle, who visited her home in Humboldt County, called her "contradiction all over - a sort of tugboat Annie of the desert ... she was a prospector... playing a man's part in a man's game." As her eyesight failed, she became notorious for driving straight down the middle of the road in clouds of dust, prompting the usual warning, "Oh, oh, here comes Josie, head for the brush." She became a legend of the Old West.