Western historian and novelist David Lavender was born in Telluride, Colorado in 1910; he received his bachelor's degree at Princeton and studied law at Stanford. He served on the faculty of Thacher School in Ojai California while writing the majority of his more than forty books, most of which center on the history of the American West. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including two Guggenheim Fellowships (1961-62 and 1968-69), four Commonwealth Club of California medals (1948, 1958, 1975, 1989), Buffalo Award of New York Westerners, two Spur Awards of Western Writers of America, and Rupert Hughes Award of Los Angeles Authors Club (all for Bent's Fort ), Western Writers of America and American Heritage awards for the Great West, Award of Merit, American Association for State and Local History (1968), Award of Merit, California Historical Society (1980), and the Wallace Stegner Award from the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado, Boulder (1996). Two of David Lavender's works ( Bent's Fort and Land of Giants ) were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
From the guide to the David Sievert Lavender Papers, circa 1930-1990, (Special Collections. University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries.)
