author
Dama Margaret Smith
1892–1973
A vivid voice of the early Southwest, she wrote from close experience of life in and around Arizona’s national parks. Her best-known work brings humor, hardship, and everyday adventure to the story of a ranger’s wife at the Grand Canyon.
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 was an American writer associated with Arizona and the Southwest. Reliable sources available here identify her as the author of I Married a Ranger and Hopi Girl, and also credit her with Petrified Forest National Monument, Arizona.
Her best-known book, I Married a Ranger, draws on her own experiences and is remembered as an intimate, lively account of pioneer-style life connected to Grand Canyon National Park. A foreword reproduced in the Project Gutenberg edition says she became the first woman government employee at the Grand Canyon in 1921, a milestone that helps explain the firsthand detail and practical warmth in her writing.
Smith also wrote about Native life and Southwestern places, including the Hopi and the Petrified Forest, showing a lasting interest in the people and landscapes of the region. She died in 1973, leaving behind books that still offer readers a direct window into an earlier Arizona.