The Lady and the Mountain Man

An Englishwoman born in 1831, Isabella Bird was frequently ill as a child and young woman, and her doctors recommended a life of travel and fresh air as the cure. Ultimately, she took the advice and traveled the world. And traveled. And traveled. Bird connected with the beauty of the Colorado Plains and the valleys and mountain parks that she found exhilarating. She would be the first woman to stand atop Colorado’s Longs Peak, in 1873. While in Colorado she spent most of her time in Estes Park, but she traveled to Garden of the Gods, across South Park and through many of the mining towns. More than just traveling, she engaged the places she visited and the people she encountered. In the Rockies, Bird became acquainted with a local character, the mountain man known as “Rocky Mountain Jim,” who would guide her up Longs Peak. Jim Nugent was a one-eyed ruffian of whom Isabella would write to her sister (in a paragraph excised from the published version of the letters) “A man any woman might love but no sane woman would marry.” Bird referred to Nugent as her “dear desperado,” and the mountain man seemingly had great affection for Bird, as well. Bird was 41 and single when she entered Colorado on September 9, 1873; she was 42 and still single when she left Colorado on December 12. Less than a year later, Nugent was shot and killed. This new book reveals the story of Bird’s year in Colorado and her relationship with Nugent by re-examining Bird’s letters to her beloved sister and putting her work in historical context.