25 Facts About David Lavender

David Sievert Lavender was an American historian and writer who was one of the most prolific chroniclers of the American West.

David Lavender 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.

David Lavender was a two-time nominee for the Pulitzer Prize, and was widely admired by scholars for his accuracy and objectivity.

David Lavender was born and raised on a cattle ranch 20 miles north of Telluride, Colorado, then a fading mining town.

David Lavender's grandfather was a Colorado supreme court judge, and both his parents were college-educated.

David Lavender attended Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania, and later studied the law and liberal arts at Princeton University.

David Lavender then moved to Denver, where he worked for an advertising agency and wrote fiction for popular pulp magazines and juvenile publications like Boys' Life.

In 1939, David Lavender moved to Ojai, California, where he took a teaching job.

David Lavender sold three short stories to The Saturday Evening Post and went on to contribute to other publications.

David Lavender began to write about his days working in the Camp Bird Mine near Ouray, Colorado, as a miner.

David Lavender kept his teaching position at the Thacher School until 1970.

In One Man's West David Lavender did not focus on "the cold and the cruel fatigue", but instead wrote about the "multitude of tiny things which in their sum make up the elemental poetry of rock and ice and snow".

David Lavender felt compelled to document his experiences in rugged southwest Colorado to preserve what he saw as a rapidly disappearing way of life.

In 1948, David 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.

In 1954, David Lavender published Bent's Fort, an historic landmark of the American West on the upper Arkansas River in present-day southeastern Colorado.

In 1958, David 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.

David Lavender produced general histories of the American West in Overland Migrations, Colorado River Country, The Great West, The Way to the Western Sea, and the American Heritage History of the West.

In 1992, David Lavender published Let Me Be Free: The Nez Perce Tragedy, the tragic story of the Nez Perce 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 David Lavender covered in many of his previous works.

David Lavender received numerous awards for his work, including awards from American Heritage and the Western Writers of America.

David Lavender received two Guggenheim Fellowships to study the fur trade, and the Commonwealth Club of California gave him four medals for his histories of Colorado, the Pacific Northwest, early San Francisco, and the Lewis and Clark expedition.

In 1990, on his 80th birthday, David Lavender married his third wife, Muriel Sharkey, whom he first got to know on a river trip through the Grand Canyon.

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

David Lavender was survived by his wife Muriel, his son David, and numerous grandchildren, stepchildren, and great-grandchildren.