In writing this book I have tried to recreate the atmosphere, language, mannerisms, etiquette and dress of the Colorado of the 1880s as faithfully as possible. While not all of the books mentioned below are exactly specific to that time and location, they do cover the period of the late 19th and very early 20th centuries and are local to the western states of both the USA and Canada. All of the following memoirs have been indispensable:
Abbott, E.C. “Teddy Blue” and Smith, Helen Huntington: We Pointed Them North: Recollections of a Cowpuncher, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1955;
Bronson, Edgar Beecher: Reminiscences of a Ranchman, General Books, Breinigsville, 2009 (reprint)
Blasingame, Ike: Dakota Cowboy: My Life in the Old Days, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1958
Hobson Jr., Richmond P.: Grass Beyond the Mountains, McClelland and Stewart, Toronto, 1951; et. seq.
Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy, 1955
The Rancher Takes A Wife, 1961
Russell, Charles M.: Trails Plowed Under: Stories of the Old West, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1996 (reprint of Doubleday ed., 1927).
I also found useful:
Adams, Andy: The Log of a Cowboy: a Narrative of the Old Trail Days, Feather Trail Press, Lexington, 2009 (reprint from 1903). Although the book was fiction, it was based on the author’s personal experience of an 1882 trail drive;
Enss, Chris: How the West was Worn: Bustles and Buckskins on the Wild Frontier, Twodot, Guilford, 2006
Morison, Samuel Eliot: History of the American People, Oxford University Press, New York, 1965.
I am further indebted to the City of Loveland Museum-Gallery for its many fascinating and informative exhibits.
My description of the terrible winter of 1886-87, which was believed to be a second Ice Age (!), was gleaned from almost all of the above-mentioned as well as the web site:
http://www.wyomingtalesandtrails.com/index.html
This site also clearly discusses the formation of the huge cattle companies by British investors, mainly various lesser members of the aristocracy such as Moreton Frewen, who was Winston Churchill’s uncle and thereby related to the Duke of Marlborough.
For information on Greeley, I used: www.greeleygov.com./museums/Historyof Greeley.aspx
My apologies to the people of the Loveland/Greeley area for playing around somewhat with their geography for the purposes of fiction. Any other mistakes in the representations of this area and history were purely unintentional and my own.