Sickly off-season consumptives occupy the era’s fashionable resort hotels.

Evidence

I put Birdie up at a stable, and as there was no place to put myself up but this huge hotel, I came here to have a last taste of luxury. They charge six dollars a day in the season, but it is now half-price; and instead of four hundred fashionable guests there are only fifteen, most of whom are speaking in the weak, rapid accents of consumption, and are coughing their hearts out. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 175

Categorization

• SEED: The health-resort economy of the Rockies, where half-price rooms and dying guests share a lobby — a strong essay angle on the west as prescribed cure.