author
Dama Margaret Smith
1892–1973
A lively memoirist of the American Southwest, she wrote from firsthand experience of early national park life. Her best-known work, I Married a Ranger, blends humor, hardship, and a rare woman’s view of the Grand Canyon in the 1920s.
2 Audiobooks
I Married a Ranger
by Dama Margaret Smith
Petrified Forest National Monument, Arizona
by Dama Margaret Smith
About the author
Born in 1892, Dama Margaret Smith is remembered for writing about life in Arizona and the wider Southwest. Reliable catalog and archive records connect her most clearly with I Married a Ranger and with a booklet on Petrified Forest National Monument.
Her work drew on direct experience. Contemporary descriptions of I Married a Ranger present it as an autobiographical account, and Arizona historical material notes that she became the first female federal employee at Grand Canyon in 1921. That background gives her writing its practical, vivid feel.
She died in 1973. Though not widely known today, her books preserve an unusual view of early national park life, especially the everyday realities, adventure, and resilience behind the romance of the West.