My home in the Rocky Mountains LCCN93512881

''A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains'' is a

travel book The genre of travel literature encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs. One early travel memoirist in Western literature was Pausanias (geographer), Pausanias, a Greek geographer of the 2nd century CE. In ...

by British explorer

Isabella Bird Isabella Lucy Bird, married name Bishop (15 October 1831 – 7 October 1904), was a nineteenth-century British explorer, writer, photographer, and naturalist. With Fanny Jane Butler she founded the John Bishop Memorial Hospital in Srinagar ...

, describing her 1873 trip to the

Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico in ...

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...

, the on the frontier of the United States. The book is a compilation of letters that Bird wrote to her sister, Henrietta, and was published in October 1879 by John Murray.

Summary

In 1872, Isabella Bird left Britain, going first to Australia, then to Hawaii, then known as the Sandwich Islands. After some time there, she sailed for the United States, docking at

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

. She passed the area of

Lake Tahoe Lake Tahoe (; was, Dáʔaw, meaning "the lake") is a Fresh water, freshwater lake in the Sierra Nevada (U.S.), Sierra Nevada of the United States. Lying at , it straddles the state line between California and Nevada, west of Carson City, Nevad ...

, to

Cheyenne, Wyoming Cheyenne ( or ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Wyoming, as well as the county seat of Laramie County, with 65,132 residents, per the 2020 US Census. It is the principal city of the Cheyenne metropolitan statistical ...

, Estes Park, Colorado, and elsewhere in and near the Rocky Mountains of the

Colorado Territory The Territory of Colorado was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from February 28, 1861, until August 1, 1876, when it was admitted to the Union as the State of Colorado. The territory was organized in the w ...

. Her guide was Rocky Mountain Jim, described as a

desperado Desperado may refer to: * Outlaw, particularly in the American Old West Books * ''Desperadoes'' (comics), a comic book series * ''Desperadoes'' (novel), a 1979 novel by Ron Hansen * Desperado Publishing, an American independent comic book publ ...

, but with whom she got along quite well. She was the first white woman to stand atop Longs Peak, Colorado, pointing out that Jim "dragged me up, like a bale of goods, by sheer force of muscle." He treated her well, and she acknowledged that "He is a man whom any woman might love but no sane woman would marry." He was shot to death, seven months later. After many other adventures, Isabella Bird ultimately took a train east.

Reception

''A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains'' was an "instant bestseller". It contributed to Bird being distinguished by being the first woman to become a member of the

Royal Geographical Society The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), often shortened to RGS, is a learned society and professional body for geography based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical scien ...

, in 1892.

References

External links

archive.org version of ''A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains''
1879 non-fiction books American travel books John Murray (publishing house) books History of the Rocky Mountains {{travel-book-stub