Isolated Colorado travel depended on settlers’ informal custom of lodging strangers.

Evidence

You must understand that in Colorado travel, unless on the main road and in the larger settlements, there are neither hotels nor taverns, and that it is the custom for the settlers to receive travelers, charging them at the usual hotel rate for accommodation. It is a very satisfactory arrangement. However, at Ranch, my first halting place, the host was unwilling to receive people in this way, I afterwards found, or I certainly should not have presented my credentials at the door of a large frame house, with large barns and a generally prosperous look. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 160

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in pioneer daily life and the infrastructure of hospitality on the frontier; echoes discussions of reciprocity and trust in pre-state settings. — connects to: Contrary to traveller talk, Colorado settlers welcomed her warmly — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 123; A remote Colorado backwoods cabin mixed rough male pioneers with a writing woman — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 102; Frontier hospitality to strangers coexisted with deep suspicion of them (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Frontier hospitality to strangers coexisted with deep suspicion of them #qualifies (0.95)
• Isolated Western settlements manufactured gentility through orderly, liquor-free social gatherings #expands (0.90) — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 268
• Colonial comforts concealed estrangement from local people and from oneself #complicates (0.85)
• Dispersed-village residents misperceive their own isolation as cosmopolitan adventurousness. #complicates (0.80)
• Dispersed-village dwellers misidentify themselves as cosmopolitan adventurers #complicates (0.80) — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 811