Biography

"Cowboy chronicler" Eugene Manlove Rhodes was born in Tecumseh, Nebraska on January 19, 1869. He moved to New Mexico with his parents in 1881, and immediately fell in love with New Mexico. By age 13, he was an accomplished well digger; by age 16, he was accomplished as a stone mason, road builder (he built the first road from Engle to Tularosa, over the San Andres Mountains), and horseman. Rhodes was largely self-educated. He was an avid and eclectic reader. In 1888, he was admitted to the University of the Pacific, in California. Financial problems caused him to leave the university after two years; however, it was here that his first published works appeared, unsigned, in the college newspaper. His first signed published piece was the poem, "Charlie Graham, " which appeared in Charles Lummis' Land of Sunshine in 1896.

Rhodes married May Louise Davison Purple, a widow with 2 sons from Apalachin, New York in 1899. Shortly after their marriage, Rhodes spent nearly two decades away from and longing for New Mexico. During this time, he wrote his first 7 novels. In 1926, he and his wife returned to New Mexico, living in Santa Fe for less than a year, and then, Alamogordo. When they could not afford to pay their rent in Alamogordo, Albert B. Fall gave them a house at White Mountain, 12 miles from Three Rivers. Eugene's poor health exiled him and May to Pacific Beach, California in 1930. Rhodes died on June 27, 1934. Per his request, he was returned to New Mexico to be buried in the San Andres Mountains.

Rhodes' philosophy, "master of no man, servant of none" permeated his life and his writing. Many of his works appeared in magazines including Land of Sunshine, Out West, McClure's, Redbook, Sunset, and Cosmopolitan, and much of his fiction was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post prior to being published as a book. Ten books by Rhodes were published between 1910 and 1935. Several of his works sold as motion pictures. Bernard DeVoto praised Rhodes' works as "the only body of fiction devoted to the cattle kingdom which is both true to it and written by an artist in prose." Despite his apparent success as a writer, for most of his life, Rhodes was broke or in debt.