
author
1854–1928
Best known for vivid frontier storytelling, this Kentucky-born writer turned years of life in the American West into adventure-filled memoir and fiction. His work draws on firsthand experience as a cowboy, miner, and pioneer, giving it an easy sense of movement and lived-in detail.

by Robert McReynolds

by Robert McReynolds
Born in 1854 and later based in Colorado Springs, Robert McReynolds wrote about the American West from experience rather than distance. In Thirty Years on the Frontier (1906), he describes his own life across the frontier as a cowboy, miner, and pioneer, and the book became his best-known work.
The same volume also shows the range of places and events that shaped his writing. McReynolds says he left his Kentucky home for western country that included Colorado and the Dakotas, and the book presents episodes from frontier travel, camp life, conflict, and hard luck in a direct, anecdotal style.
Published records for Thirty Years on the Frontier and later listings of his books also connect him with other titles including Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew, Rodney Wilkes, The Luxury of Poverty, A Modern Jean Valjean, and Facts and Fancies. Robert McReynolds died in 1928.