Nothing Daunted (35 page)

O
AK
C
REEK
, H
AYDEN, AND
E
LKHEAD

Mike Yurich, a full-time volunteer at Tracks and Trails Museum (part of the Historical Society of Oak Creek and Phippsburg), assisted by Laurie Elendu, was one of my guides to the town. Mike, inspired by a homesteader who spoke to his fifth-grade class, has spent some sixty-five years collecting photos, old-timers’ stories, newspaper articles, and miners’ equipment. Ferry Carpenter was the commencement speaker his senior year, and, Mike told me, “that clinched the interest.” He spent several afternoons talking to me about Oak Creek’s colorful past. Paul Bonnifield, a former coal miner and conductor on the Denver and Rio Grande, taught me about the geology and the coal-mining history of Routt County as we toured Oak Hills and Phippsburg, where he grew up in a shack built by the Moffat Road. In a series of evocative e-mails, he also enabled me to see and feel what it was like to be inside a mine and in Oak Hills when the coal companies were in operation.

No one was more scrupulous about her area of expertise than the late Jan Leslie, who served for many years as Hayden’s unofficial historian. Much of what I learned about Hayden came from her, in e-mails and packages of clippings and photos. Betsy Blakeslee, the manager of the Carpenter Ranch, gave me the run of Ferry’s library—an excellent way to gauge the breadth of his mind and interests. There are shelves of volumes on Woodrow Wilson and Abraham Lincoln, around the corner from a section on cattle breeding and one on poetry. As Betsy and I skied around what is now the property of the Nature Conservancy, she explained the conservation and educational work the group does, along with the ranching. Laurel Watson, the curator at the Hayden Heritage Center, helped with final questions about the town; Tammy Delaney and Heather Stirling discussed what they
knew about Isadore Bolten; Bain and Christine White gave me a tour of the former Hayden Inn, now their house, which they are meticulously restoring; Bette Rathe, at the University of Northern Colorado, gave guidance about Colorado students’ final exams.

L
IBRARIES

I would like to thank Nanci A. Young, the college archivist at Smith College Archives, and Amy Hague, the curator of manuscripts at the Sophia Smith Collection, for their patience with numerous requests. At Princeton University Library: Christine A. Lutz, assistant university archivist for public services, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library. At the Denver Public Library, Western History/Genealogy Department: Ellen Zazzarino, senior archivist/librarian, and Bruce Hanson, researcher. At the Huntington Library: Peter Blodgett, H. Russell Smith Foundation curator of Western historical manuscripts, and Katrina Denman, library assistant for Western history.

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A number of people were key to the creation of this book, which began as an article in the
New Yorker.
It was David Remnick, with whom I have worked for sixteen years, who prodded me to start writing again for the magazine. His lucid prose and ferocious work ethic are a perpetual source of inspiration. Emily Eakin was my editor on the piece; her astute suggestions continued to influence me throughout the project. Others with multitudinous skills who saw the article through: Henry Finder, Daniel Zalewski, Mary Hawthorne, Ann Goldstein, Lila Byock (who masterfully fact-checked both the piece and the book), Virginia Cannon, Hendrik Hertzberg, Pamela McCarthy, Elisabeth Biondi, Caroline Mailhot, Jessie Wender, and Mengfan Wu. Outside the magazine, the first person I heard from was my incomparable agent, Amanda Urban, who e-mailed at six-thirty on Easter morning, after reading the article, urging me to write a book. Ron Bernstein soon followed with his own notes of encouragement.

I am indebted to friends and family who read and improved the book. Connie Bruck saw the possibilities in the final story before I even started
writing, read it more than once, and goaded me at every step. Katherine Boo did a superb edit from Mumbai even as she was finishing her own book. David Rompf, Roger Rosenblatt, Daniel Tyler, Betty Henshaw, Hermione Wickenden, Cynthia Snyder, and Lauren Collins were my first generous readers. Nicholas Trautwein and David Grann read parts of the book and were trusted consultants; David Greenberg, an associate professor of history at Rutgers University, kindly read all of it for accuracy.

Thomas Mallon helped me to look at letters in a new way. Alexa Cassanos, Ann Hulbert, Claudia Roth Pierpont, Anne Garrels, Constance Casey, Lawrence Wright, Kip Hawley, David and Peter Wickenden, and Norma Weiser had sound suggestions. Andrea Thompson, Chloe Fox, Betsy Morais, and Natalie Shutler helped me track down stray facts, and Chloe proofread the galleys. Maria Alkiewicz Penberthy told me about her great-grandmother Jane Kelly, the 1888 Smith graduate who went on to become a doctor; Maria handed over her own archival materials from the Sophia Smith Collection.

At Scribner, I would like to thank the entire team that produced this book. My inspirational editor, Nan Graham, read it several times and had unerring guidance on everything from where to begin to the shape of the epilogue. Susan Moldow has been the shrewd, attentive publisher every writer longs for. Others who lent their vision and skills include Rex Bonomelli, Carla Jones, Beth Thomas, Kate Lloyd, Brian Belfiglio, Roz Lippel, Kara Watson, Paul Whitlatch, and Dan Cuddy.

Nothing Daunted
is, in part, about the strength of family ties. In my case, these include not only the industrialists and matriarchs of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries but also my father, Dan Wickenden, the writer and editor who inspired my career. My daughters, Sarah and Rebecca, have the radiant spirit and good humor of their great-grandmother, and her blunt honesty. They indulged my perpetually preoccupied state and pulled me away from the computer when I had been there too long. Becca sat down one day and assembled a draft of the bibliography. Over the years, my husband, Ben, has taught me a lot about reporting, and he helped with some of the investigative challenges posed by this project. He offered steady counsel from start to finish. For his integrity and devotion, I am indebted to him every day.

Minnie Jones and Marie Huguenin

The teachers’ room at the Harrison ranch

Charlie and Paroda Fulton with their children

Rosamond’s class

Dorothy burning her trash by the henhouse

Isadore Bolten’s cobbling class