Isabella L. Bird — A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains

77 published claims from this book.

• A confident guide turned the party opposite to its destination and got lost
• A courteous traveling companion was the notorious Indian-killer Comanche Bill.
• A desperado’s remorse cannot be trusted as genuine
• A dry, orderly ranch house transformed rough freighters’ behavior.
• A Pacific-route sleeper car in 1879 offered hotel-grade luxury and quiet.
• A Rocky Mountain home in 1873 was a chinkless log cabin served by relays
• A Rocky Mountain winter storm froze all provisions and killed calves overnight.
• A rough Estes Park cabin offered Bird ideal comfort and health.
• A Sierra sunset could overpower a traveler into walking instead of riding.
• A single woman’s presence transformed the emotional character of a bachelor settlement
• A wolf howl and skunk gnawing made for an eerie solitary night
• A woman could camp overnight at 11000 feet among wolves in 1873.
• Altitude sickness has a mild form with lassitude and exercise difficulty.
• An 1870s traveler judged Colorado Springs unappealing for lacking trees
• An educated English couple was an oasis in an unlettered frontier.
• Backcountry Western men insisted on courteous respect toward women.
• Beaver dams can completely reroute a river’s course
• Bird’s introduction of Fodder to Jim led to Jim’s death
• British settlers endured frontier discomfort that foreigners improved with elegance.
• Colorado frontier settlers prized sharp dealing yet kept property and women safe.
• Colorado mining camps prized killing men as a badge of status.
• Colorado settler life combined brutality with safety and greed with generosity
• Colorado’s climate attracted thousands of health seekers with chronic diseases.
• Colorado’s high, dry, cloudless climate allows outdoor sleeping half the year.
• Colorado’s mountain parks are hundreds of hidden high valleys from 6,000 to 11,000 feet
• Deep snow can cut a rider’s daily distance to under two miles an hour
• Denver’s church congregation was mostly women despite a male-heavy city.
• Digger Indians lived chiefly on grasshoppers at the Sierras’ railhead
• English ‘High Toners’ abroad displayed comical personal arrogance
• Estes Park in 1873 had only two settler families and no surveyed land
• Every mile traveling from Colorado Springs leads farther and higher into the mountains
• Experiencing overwhelming mountains explains the origin of nature worship.
• Frontier cabin life fused chores, riding, and genuine democratic equality
• Frontier cabins housed a motley mix of invalids, prospectors, and aristocrats
• Frontier respect for a woman hinged on proven wilderness skill, not gender
• Frontier settlement extinguished childhood by forcing early independence
• Frontier wildlife remained unafraid of humans in this unsettled region
• Frost-fall builds featherlike ice formations only in rare atmosphere and intense cold
• Granitic dust soil at high altitude evaporates snow and never holds water
• High-altitude rarefied air and snow glare induce soroche mountain sickness
• Indian Bureau corruption diverted most appropriated funds from Indians.
• Lake Tahoe’s pristine beauty was ringed by distant logging sounds
• Liquor prohibition correlated with crime-free districts in Colorado.
• Living with almost no possessions can teach true frugality
• Long’s Peak dominates Estes Park and gathers a mythic personality in the imagination.
• Mining devastates landscapes and corrupts the miners who pursue it.
• Mountain dawns mirror inverted peaks in still alpine lakes
• Mountain gold mining washed muddy debris down into the Sacramento
• Mountain Jim greeted her warmly in the dark despite his brutal reputation.
• Mountain Jim spoke with cultured elegance and lost his eye to a grizzly.
• Mountain Jim’s gentle Arab mare contrasted sharply with his ruffian appearance.
• Mountain Jim’s ruined face mixed marble beauty with repulsion.
• Mountain Jim’s violent mood yielded to a confession of moral ruin.
• Mountain outlaws could feel themselves damned beyond redemption
• Pioneer women routinely performed heavy agricultural field labor.
• Prairie-dog burrowing was already feared to damage the prairies.
• Rarefied mountain air saps evening mental energy while sharpening observation
• Rocky Mountain bears attack people only when wounded, provoked, or guarding cubs.
• Sierra snow-sheds blocked fifty miles of mountain views from rail passengers
• Silver mining dominated the Colorado Rockies in this era.
• Solitary miners’ camp lights dotted the mountain darkness at night.
• South Park’s rarefied air causes lung oppression and nosebleeds in new arrivals
• St. Vrain valley’s autumnal foliage was vivid red and gold.
• Standing atop a continental divide makes waters visibly part toward two oceans
• Stranded strangers formed a serene domestic partnership in the wilderness
• The 1873 financial panic suspended all Denver banks and cash
• The Colorado Rockies exceed the Alps as a mountain panorama.
• The guide’s incompetence forced brutal physical struggle on the horses and riders
• The high Rocky Mountain forest was untouched by logging in the 1870s.
• The Rocky Mountain sunrise moved even a hardened desperado to reverence.
• The St. Vrain canyon combined vivid autumn color with rushing fords.
• Unchinked log cabins forced blanket-buried sleeping in deep frost
• Vigilance committees summarily hanged men on flimsy pretexts.
• Votes were openly bought and sold in Colorado Territory elections.
• Western emigrant wagon families spent months crossing with devastating losses
• Western frontier men prized courage in women as their main protection.
• Winter ice-hole trout fishing in the park could yield sixty pounds in a day.