David Lavender

David Lavender
Born	February 4, 1910(1910-02-04) Telluride, Colorado
Died	April 26, 2003(2003-04-26) (aged 93) Ojai, California
Occupation	Historian, Author
Genres	History

David Sievert Lavender (February 4, 1910 – April 26, 2003) was an American historian and writer of the Western United States. He published more than 40 books, including two novels, several children's books, and a memoir. Unlike his two prominent contemporaries, Bernard DeVoto and Wallace Stegner, Lavender was not an academic. He based much of his writing on first-hand practical knowledge of the American west, traveling to the sites of his historical accounts and experiencing the historical realities directly—in the mines, on the trails, in the mountains, or on the rivers. David Lavender was a two-time nominee for the Pulitzer Prize, and was widely admired by scholars for his accuracy and objectivity.^[1]

Early years

David Lavender was born and raised on a cattle ranch 20 miles north of Telluride, Colorado, a rugged mining town. During his early years, he worked as a silver miner and a cowboy. He helped run his stepfather's cattle ranch until it closed during the Great Depression. His love of the outdoors led to his becoming an avid mountaineer and dedicated conservationist.

Although raised in the rustic mountains of western Colorado, Lavender came from a family that valued education. His grandfather was a Colorado supreme court judge, and both his parents were college-educated. Lavender attended Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania, and later studied the law and liberal arts at Princeton University. He graduated in 1931, with a love of history and writing, but he returned to western Colorado to help his family run the their cattle ranch.

Writing career

In 1938, after the cattle ranch failed, Lavender moved to Ojai, California, where he took a teaching job. During this period of his life, he wrote three novels for young people. He also began to write about the American West he had experienced growing up – wanting to record a way of life that was slowly fading away. He began to write about his days working in the Camp Bird Mine near Ouray, Colorado, as a miner. The result was a memoir, One Man's West, which was published in 1943. That year, Lavender began teaching English at The Thacher School—a boarding school in Ojai, California—where he encouraged and supported many young writers. Lavender kept his teaching position at the Thacher School until 1970.

The American West of Lavender's early years was still a place of ranchers, miners, cowboys, prospectors, and mountaineers—and for most men, a world of backbreaking, lonely, and dangerous work. But in One Man's West, Lavender remembered "not the cold and the cruel fatigue, but rather the multitude of tiny things which in their sum make up the elemental poetry of rock and ice and snow." Lavender felt compelled to document his experiences in rugged southwest Colorado to preserve this rapidly disappearing way of life. The book is filled with charming memorable characters and personal stories that are captivating and incredible, yet told in a warm conversational style.

In 1948, Lavender followed up his successful memoir with The Big Divide, a history of the Rocky Mountain region that established his reputation as a serious historian. The critical and commercial success of these two books launched Lavender's literary career.^[2]

In 1954, Lavender published Bent's Fort, a major historic landmark of the American West on the upper Arkansas River in present-day southeastern Colorado. Built by Charles and William Bent, Bent's Fort was a massive private fort that stood until 1849 as the center of trade with the Indians of the central plains. Lavender's history of these men and their role in opening up the southwestern region of North America has been compared to the works of eminent historians such as Francis Parkman and William H. Prescott.

In 1958, Lavender wrote The Trail to Santa Fe, about Zebulon Pike and his exploration of the American Southwest in present-day Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. The book captures the turbulent adventures of the explorers, traders, and fighters who opened up this new country, and the hardships they faced during their westward expansion into unchartered land along the Santa Fe Trail, which ran from Independence, Missouri to Santa Fe.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Lavender wrote a series of highly acclaimed histories of the American West, including Red Mountain in 1963, Westward Vision: The Story of the Oregon Trail in 1963, The American West in 1969, and The Rockies in 1975.

In the 1980s, Lavender expanded his focus as an historian, writing about the Pacific Northwest in Fort Vancouver (1981), Wyoming in Fort Laramie (1984), Utah and Arizona in Colorado River Country (1982) and River Runners of the Grand Canyon (1985), California in California: A Place, a People, a Dream (1986) and California: Land of New Beginnings (1987), and Colorado in The Telluride Story (1987). He also produced impressive general histories of the American West in Overland Migrations (1981), Colorado River Country (1982), The Great West (1985), The Way to the Western Sea (1988), and the American Heritage History Of The West (1988).

In 1992, Lavender published Let Me Be Free: The Nez Percé Tragedy (1992), the tragic story of the Nez Percé Indians' flight from their homeland to Canada to escape the United States cavalry. The clash between European-Americans and the American Indians was a subject Lavender covered in many of his previous works.

“

This goes back to The Big Divide. I always travel to the places I write about, so while I was researching The Big Divide I went to Santa Fé for the first time. I arrived in September, and found myself in the midst of the Fiesta and the burning of Zozobra, old man gloom. That was quite a time. Well, on that trip I got to meet a few Indians. I journeyed to Taos and Acoma Pueblos, and got interested in Canyon de Chelly. This was my first fascination with Indians. There were none around the ranch when I was growing up. That was just the beginning, and my research deepened my fascination.[2]

”

In the last decade of his life, Lavender's focus turned toward the American Southwest. His books De Soto, Coronado, Cabrillo: Explorers of the Northern Mystery (1992), The Santa Fe Trail (1995), Pipe Spring and the Arizona Strip (1997), Mother Earth, Father Sky: Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest (1998), and Climax at Buena Vista: The Decisive Battle of the Mexican-American War (2003) were significant contributions to documenting the history of the American Southwest.

David Lavender's first wife, Martha, died in 1959. He was married to his second wide, Martha Moreland, for 25 years before she too passed away. On his 80th birthday he married his third wife, Muriel Sharkey, whom he first got to know on a river trip through the Grand Canyon. In 2003, Lavender's health began to fail.^[3]

David Lavender died of natural causes at his home in Ojai, California on April 26, 2003, at the age of 93.^[1]

Works

• One Man's West (1943)
• The Big Divide: The Lively Story of the People of the Southern Rocky Mountains (1948)
• Snowbound: The Tragic Story of the Donner Party (1948)
• Bent's Fort (1954)
• Trail to Santa Fe (1958)
• Red Mountain (1963)
• Westward Vision: The Story of the Oregon Trail (1963)
• The American West (1969)
• Penguin Book of the American West (1969)
• California (1972)
• The Rockies (1975)
• Nothing seemed impossible: William C. Ralston and early San Francisco (1975)
• David Lavender's Colorado (1976)
• One Man's West (1977)
• Winner Take All: The Trans-Canada Canoe Trail (1977)
• Land of Giants: Drive to the Pacific Northwest, 1750-1950 (1979)
• The fist in the wilderness (1979)
• Overland Migrations: Settlers to Oregon, California, and Utah (1980)
• Los Angeles, Two Hundred (1980)
• Fort Vancouver (1981)
• Overland Migrations (1981)
• Colorado River Country (1982)
• The Southwest (1984)
• Fort Laramie: A Guide to Fort Laramie National Historic Site (1984)
• River Runners of the Grand Canyon (1985)
• The Great West (1985)
• Fort Laramie and the Changing Frontier (1985)
• California: A Place, a People, a Dream (1986)
• California: Land of New Beginnings (1987)
• The Telluride Story (1987)
• The Way to the Western Sea (1988)
• American Heritage History Of The West (1988)
• Let Me Be Free: The Nez Perce Tragedy (1992)
• De Soto, Coronado, Cabrillo: Explorers of the Northern Mystery (1992)
• Mask Arts of Mexico (photographer) (1994)
• The Santa Fe Trail (1995)
• Pipe Spring and the Arizona Strip (1997)
• Mother Earth, Father Sky: Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest (1998)
• The Great Persuader (1999)
• Fort Vancouver: Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, Washington (2001)
• Climax at Buena Vista: The Decisive Battle of the Mexican-American War (2003)

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Reed, Christopher. The Guardian "David Lavender". http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2003/may/06/guardianobituaries.obituaries The Guardian. Retrieved 7 November 2011. 
2. ^ ^{a b} Nizalowski, John. Colorado Central Magazine "Some words with David Lavender". http://cozine.com/2000-february/some-words-with-david-lavender Colorado Central Magazine. Retrieved 7 November 2011. 
3. ^ Chawkins, Steve. Los Angeles Times "David S. Lavender, 93; Prolific Western Historian". http://articles.latimes.com/2003/apr/27/local/me-lavender27 Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 7 November 2011. 

External links

• Obituary at The Guardian

Persondata
Name	Lavender, David
Alternative names
Short description	American writer
Date of birth	February 4, 1910
Place of birth	Telluride, Colorado
Date of death	April 26, 2003
Place of death	Ojai, California