David Lavender
| David Lavender | |
|---|---|
David Lavender, c. 1969
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| Born | David Sievert Lavender February 4, 1910 Telluride, Colorado |
| Died | April 26, 2003 (aged 93) Ojai, California |
| Occupation | Historian, author |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Princeton University |
| Genre | History |
| Subject | American West |
| Spouse |
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| Children | David G. Lavender |
David Sievert Lavender (February 4, 1910 – April 26, 2003) was an American historian and writer who was one of the most prolific chroniclers of the American West. 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. Much of his writing was influenced by his first-hand practical knowledge of the American West and the historical realities and locations depicted in his books—in the mines, on the trails, in the mountains, and on the rivers. 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. During his early years, he worked as a gold miner and a cowboy. 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 highly valued learning and 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.
After graduating in 1931, he briefly attended Stanford Law School before returning to western Colorado to help his stepfather Edgar Lavender run his cattle ranch. After his stepfather died in 1934, he lived on his sizable cattle ranch until the bank repossessed it in 1935. 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, Lavender moved to Ojai, California, where he took a teaching job. He sold three short stories to The Saturday Evening Post and went on to contribute to other publications. He began to write about the American West he had experienced growing up—wanting to record a way of life that he felt 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.
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