Durango Diary II
1890s-1945
Duane A. Smith
Duane Smith came to Fort Lewis College as a professor of history and Southwest Studies in 1964. Not content to just teach, Smith also has been a prolific writer. He has published dozens of books and his columns have appeared in the Durango Herald since 1986. A wide-ranging selection of those columns are compiled into this book.
Durango Diary II is the story of Durango from its early years through World War II. Smith’s eye for detail brings the eras to life. Why were cows roaming up and down the Boulevard? What did a pound of butter cost in 1940? Where were the best country dances or church socials? How did women’s roles change in Durango? And what was the town like when Prohibition shut down all the saloons?
Durango Diary II not only shows us how
Durango got where it is today, but also how some things never change.
Duane A. Smith
Duane Smith received
his academic degrees from the University of Colorado and completed
his Ph.D. in 1964.
That year he began to teach at Fort Lewis College where he is a Professor
of Southwest Studies.
His areas of research and writing include Colorado history, Civil
War history, mining history, urban history and baseball history.
He is an extremely popular professor at Fort Lewis, and he is the
author of over thirty books on a variety of subjects including Rocky
Mountain Mining Camps: The Urban Frontier; A Colorado History; Horace Tabor: His Life and the Legend; Silver Saga: The
Story of Caribou Colorado; Colorado Mining: A Photographic
History; Fortunes Are for the Few: Letters of a Forty-niner; Rocky Mountain Boom Town: A History of Durango; A Land Alone:
Colorado’s Western Slope; Song of the Hammer and Drill: The
Colorado San Juans, 1860-1914; Mining America: The Industry
and the Environment, 1800-1980; Mesa Verde National Park: Shadows
of the Centuries; The Birth of Colorado: A Civil War Perspective;
and Sacred Trust: The Birth and Development of Fort Lewis College.
