author
Romaine Lowdermilk
1890–1970
A real Arizona cowboy who turned campfire songs, ranch life, and Western storytelling into a varied creative career, he wrote fiction as well as music. He is remembered both for his published stories and for helping shape the early dude-ranch culture of Arizona.
1 Audiobook
Codes
by Romaine Lowdermilk, Arch E. Giddings
About the author
Born in 1890 and known as "Romy," Romaine Lowdermilk built a life that blended working-cowboy experience with entertainment and writing. Sources about his career describe him as a musician, singer, composer of Western songs, storyteller, and writer of Western short fiction, and they also credit him with a major role in Arizona's early dude-ranch scene.
Lowdermilk founded the Kay El Bar Guest Ranch in Wickenburg, and later he and his wife Jean operated Rancho Manana in Cave Creek. Those same sources say he became known as the "Father of the Arizona Dude Ranch," a nickname that reflects how strongly his name is tied to Arizona ranch tourism and cowboy performance culture.
As an author, he is listed by Project Gutenberg for the work Codes, written with Arch E. Giddings. Other accounts note that he published Western short stories and performed with the Arizona Wranglers. He died in 1970, leaving behind a legacy that sits at the crossroads of frontier folklore, popular Western music, and regional writing.