author
Joe Mills
1880–1935
A lively Colorado memoirist, naturalist, and teacher, he wrote about mountain life with the kind of firsthand detail that makes the wilderness feel close and real. Best known for A Mountain Boyhood, his work grows out of a life spent in the Rockies.
1 Audiobook
A Mountain Boyhood
by Joe Mills
About the author
Born in 1880 and known as Enoch J. "Joe" Mills, he was an American naturalist, educator, hotelier, and author whose life was closely tied to Colorado and the Rocky Mountains. He was the younger brother of naturalist Enos Mills, and his writing drew heavily on outdoor experience and mountain country.
His best-known book, A Mountain Boyhood, is a memoir of growing up in the West and discovering the natural world around him. The book remains the clearest window into his voice: warm, observant, and shaped by a deep affection for wilderness, pioneer life, and the people who made homes in the high country.
Mills died in 1935. Though he is not as widely remembered as some other nature writers of his era, his work still offers a vivid, personal picture of early Colorado mountain life.