Paul Dayton Bailey

Paul Dayton Bailey (July 12, 1906 – October 26, 1987) was the owner/publisher of Westernlore Press and a writer of many books himself that focused on the Western American experience and, in particular, Latter-day Saint history.

Bailey was the son of Eli and Olive Bailey and raised in American Fork, Utah until the age of 13 when his father went to Grant's Pass, Oregon to take part in the building of a new sugar beet-processing factory for the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company. As Eli helped build the factory, he sent letters and money home, finally persuading his family to join him.

The family did not stay in Oregon long. Utah-Idaho failed to persuade local farmers to pick up the new crop and, two summers later, Eli was put in charge of dismantling the factory and loading it upon rail cars for reassembly in Yakima Valley, Washington. The family, which had always been poor, grew more impoverished with each move, and the Yakima venture did not pull them out.

The factory was not reassembled in time for the first year's (bumper) crop, and before the second year's crop could be processed, World War I ended, dropping sugar prices to what Bailey would later describe as "catastrophic lows". The lowered prices were accompanied by a disease called "curly top" which reduced the previously enormous Washington yields to industry-killing scarcity.

The Bailey family responded to the death of sugar with a disastrous attempt at potato farming in Washington, after which young Bailey ran away, back home to American Fork, where he set up residence with his maternal grandfather Joseph Barlow Forbes and his first wife—Bailey's grandmother—Nancy. Living with them meant Bailey was not allowed to drop out of school and work as he had intended.

A year after his return to American Fork, his mother and his siblings also returned. Elie moved to Idaho Falls, Idaho to be foreman at a UISC factory there. Although Eli sent checks to his family, Bailey finally did drop out of school to help support his mother, who would soon divorce Eli, at which point Bailey left home for good with a move to Salt Lake City.

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