author
Con Price
1869–1958
A real cowboy of the old West, he turned his own adventures into lively frontier memoirs full of cattle drives, hard winters, and the changing life of Montana. His writing carries the feel of someone who was there, remembering a rough, fast-vanishing world from the inside.
1 Audiobook
Memories of Old Montana
by Con Price
About the author
Born in Manchester, Iowa, in 1869, Con Price moved west as a boy after his father died. He grew up in the Black Hills of South Dakota, started cowboy work in the mid-1880s, and reached Montana in 1887, where he worked on ranches and took part in the world that would later shape his writing.
Price is best known for Memories of Old Montana, a memoir drawn from decades of firsthand experience on the range. The book looks back on frontier life from the 1870s into the 20th century, and it is especially valued for its plainspoken picture of cowboy work, ranch life, and the people who built early Montana.
Archival records also connect him with Claudia Toole, whom he married in 1899, and with the artist Charles M. Russell, one of his longtime friends from the Montana range country. Price died in 1958, leaving behind a small but vivid record of the American West as he knew it.