author
Forbes Parkhill
1892–1974
A veteran newspaperman who turned the raw material of the American West into lively history and fiction, he wrote with the pace of a reporter and the eye of someone who knew Colorado firsthand. His work ranges from frontier history to pulp adventure and screen stories.
1 Audiobook
The riddle of the rangeland
by Forbes Parkhill
About the author
Born in Denver in 1892, Forbes Parkhill built his career in journalism before becoming a prolific author. Archival records describe him as a Denver journalist and author of Western history and fiction, and the Denver Public Library notes that he worked for the Denver Post, Denver Republican, Denver Times, and Rocky Mountain News, as well as newspapers in El Paso and New York.
That newsroom background shaped the way he wrote. Parkhill produced both nonfiction about Denver and the wider West and a large body of fiction, and several of his stories were adapted for motion pictures. His subject matter stayed close to the places and legends he knew best: frontier conflict, Western characters, and the changing life of Colorado.
Later recognition followed his historical writing as well as his fiction. Sources available here note that he received the Colorado Author's League Award in 1962 for The Last of the Indian Wars. He died in San Diego in 1974, leaving behind a body of work that blends reporter's detail with old-West storytelling.