Andy Adams

Born in Indiana in 1859, he grew up helping with horses and cattle before heading to Texas in the early 1880s. He spent about a decade there, much of it on cattle drives along western trails, experiences that later gave his fiction its unusual sense of authenticity.

After trying business and then gold mining, he settled in Colorado Springs in 1894. He began writing in his forties, and his best-known book, The Log of a Cowboy, appeared in 1903; it is often noted for drawing on autobiographical experience rather than the more romantic cowboy legends common in popular western fiction.

He continued writing western novels and stories while living in Colorado Springs, where he remained until his death in 1935. Readers still return to his work for its firsthand feel and its picture of cowboy life as labor, travel, and endurance rather than pure adventure.