Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Preliminary Guide to the David Lavender - Fort Laramie Collection
Wyles Mss 3
View entire collection guide
Search this collection
Table of contents
Title: David Lavender - Fort Laramie Collection
Date (inclusive): ca. latter 1970s-early 1980s
Collection Number: Wyles Mss 3
Collector:
Lavender, David, 1910-2003
Collection Size:
.8 linear feet
(2 document boxes)
Repository:
University of California, Santa Barbara. Library. Dept. of Special Collections
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Abstract: Research files from David Lavender, used in writing
Fort Laramie and the Changing Frontier (Official National Park Handbook, 1983). Mainly photocopies and typed notes of correspondence, diaries, reports and other
documents from the latter 19th century.
Physical Location: Del Sur.
Language:
English
None.
Copyright has not been assigned to the Department of Special Collections, UCSB. All requests for permission to publish or
quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Collections. Permission for publication is given
on behalf of the Department of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply
permission of the copyright holder, which also must be obtained.
David Lavender - Fort Laramie Collection. Wyles Mss 3. Department of Special Collections, Davidson Library, University of
California, Santa Barbara.
Gift of David Lavender, ca. 1983.
David Lavender, teacher, cowboy, and historian of the West, was born in Telluride, Colorado on Feb. 4, 1910. He attending
Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania, graduated from Princeton University in 1931, and briefly attended Stanford Law School.
His grandfather was chief justice of Colorado and his stepfather ranched and ran a stagecoach line. After his stepfather died
during the Depression, he took over the family ranch and, when it failed, worked in a gold mine for a while. He moved to Denver,
became a copywriter for an advertising agency, and later moved to California, where he became a screenwriter, providing plots
for Westerns, and writing stories for Western pulp magazines, juvenile publications such as
Boys' Life, and the
Saturday Evening Post.
In 1939, Lavender moved to Ojai, California. His first book, a collection of autobiographical essays entitled
One Man's West, came out in 1943. The same year he began teaching at the Thacher School, a boarding school in Ojai, where he remained on
the faculty until 1970. Some of his students most vivid memories of their school years were of the camping trips that Lavender
took them on.
In all, Lavender published more than 40 books on western themes ranging from fur trappers to railroad barons and early San
Francisco bankers. He was known and praised for his meticulous research and story-telling abilities. He was nominated for
the Pulitzer Prize twice and received many significant awards for his work, including two Guggenheim fellowships to study
the fur trade and four medals from the Commonwealth Club of California for his histories of Colorado, the Pacific Northwest,
early San Francisco, and the Lewis and Clark expedition. In 1997 the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado
honored him with the its Wallace Stegner Award for sustained contribution to the cultural identity of the American West.
For many years David Lavender conducted research in and was a consultant to the William Wyles Collection (with extensive holdings
in western history) at the UCSB Libraries Special Collections. He died in Ojai, California on April 19, 2003, at the age of
93.
*Information for this biography was drawn from Associated Press,
Los Angeles Times, and
New York Times obituaries, Apr. 2003, as well as a UCSB Libraries
Soundings article, 1982.
Scope and Content of Collection
The collection contains David Lavender's research files, ca. latter 1970s-early 1980s, used in writing
Fort Laramie and the Changing Frontier (Official National Park Handbook, 1983). The dates listed in the container list, however, generally refer to the dates of
the original sources that Lavender consulted.
Arrangement
The collection is divided into two series:
- I. Fort Laramie and the Changing Frontier , which contains research notes and copies of historical accounts, including correspondence, diaries, and other documents from the latter 19th century.
- II. Historic Preservation, Restoration, Interpretation of Fort Laramie Historic Site Historic, which primarily contains recent studies and reports undertaken by the National Park Service.
The published version of
Fort Laramie and the Changing Frontier, as well as other works by Lavender, and works on Fort Laramie by other authors, have been cataloged separately and can be
searched on Pegasus, the UCSB Libraries online catalog.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.
Lavender, David, 1910-2003
Fort Laramie (Wyo.)
Historic preservation--United States.