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Happy Trails:  A Pictorial Celebration of the Life and Times of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans

Hundreds of excited children, with hard-earned nickels and dimes clutched tightly in their fists, exchanged their money for a ticket at Saturday matinees across the country in the 1940s. The chance to see singing cowboy Roy Rogers, his horse, Trigger, and leading lady Dale Evans come up against the West’s most notorious criminals brought young audiences to theatres in droves. And, in the process, it elevated western musicals to one of the most popular film genres in history.

Roy Rogers and Dale Evans were the reigning royalty of B-rated westerns for more than a decade. They helped persuade moviegoers that good always triumphs over evil in a fair fight and that life on the open range was one long, wholesome sing-along. Together, the King of the Cowboys and the Queen of the West appeared in more than 200 films and television programs.

Roy and Dale made their first pictures together in 1994. The film, The Cowboy and the Senorita, brought an estimated 900,000 fans to movie houses in America and began a partnership for the couple that lasted fifty-two years. The chemistry between Roy and Dale was enchanting, and together they were an entertainment powerhouse. In addition to their films, they had popular radio programs, comic book series, albums, and a long list of merchandise (including clothes, boots, and toys), all bearing their names.

Roy and Dale were successful individuals, as well, Dale, a talented singer-songwriter, performed with big band orchestras, shared the stage with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, and penned many popular tunes, including the song that would be Roy and Dale’s theme, “Happy Trails.” Roy was a co-founder and member of the group the Sons of the Pioneers. The band made a name for itself singing original country music songs, including “Cool Water” and “Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds.”

Roy Rogers and Dale Evans were married in 1947. As a couple they were consistently ranked in the top ten among the western stars at the box office. They costarred in twenty-nine movies and recorded more than 200 albums together. In 1951, they parlayed their fame to the small screen, appearing in a half-hour television show aptly called The Roy Rogers Show.

When they weren’t working, the western icons spent a great deal of time visiting children in hospitals and orphanages. They were dedicated Christians who sought to serve the hurt and needy. They would later be recognized by national civic organizations for their humanitarian efforts.

Roy and Dale’s off-screen life was filled with a great deal of love and happiness. They had nine children, whom they adored and showered with affection. Their family was no stranger to tragedy though. One child, Robin, died of complications associated with Down syndrome. An adopted daughter, Debbie, died in a church bus accident when she was twelve; their adopted son, Sandy, suffered as accidental death while serving in the military in Germany. Robin’s death inspired Dale to write Angel Unaware, the first of her more than twenty books.

After the couple was semi-retired from the entertainment industry, they greeted fans at the museum in Victorville, California, and enjoyed life with their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Thousands of western enthusiasts and fans alike now make the pilgrimage to Branson, Missouri, where the Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum is currently located. They come to get a glimpse of their heroes’ six-shooters, boots, costumes, and other personal artifacts on display.

The Rogers family’s collection of priceless items elicits fond memories of an inspirational pair who used their immense talent to encourage moral and spiritual strength. The artifacts draw visitors back in time to when knights of the American plains yodeled, wore white hats and fancy boots, and thrived on defeating the outlaws and rescuing the defenseless.

To learn more about the cowboy duo read Happy Trails

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The Cowboy and the Senorita: A Biography of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and

Happy Trails: A Pictorial Celebration of the Life and Times of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans

Elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1980 as a member of the Sons of the Pioneers and elected again in 1988 as Roy Rogers.

Roy got his horse Trigger in 1938 and rode him in every one of his films and TV shows after that. He had appeared in one earlier movie, ridden by Olivia de Havilland in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). Trigger died in 1965 at age 33.

Roy’s theme song, “Happy Trails”, was written by Dale Evans.

Inducted (as a member of the Sons of the Pioneers) into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1995.

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Happy Trails:  A Pictorial Celebration of the Life and Times of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans

This month Roy Rogers and Dale Evans fans can enter to win a copy of Happy Trails:  A Pictorial Celebration of the Life and Times of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.  Visit www.chrisenss.com to learn more.

Roy Rogers and Dale Evans ruled the West from the silver screen as the King of Cowboys and Queen of the West. Off screen, this husband-and-wife duo raised a family and lived the “Code of the West.” Now, in this new book, the Rogers family shares their memories of Roy, Dale, and Trigger, along with their other sidekicks and more than a hundred never before seen, behind-the-scenes photographs.

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The Lady and the Mountain Man: 

Isabella Bird, Rocky Mountain Jim, and their Unlikely Friendship

The Greeley stage arrived by mid-morning and came to a stop at the stables not far from the inn.  A male passenger dressed in tailored clothing from his head to his boots stepped out of the vehicle.  He was wearing light colored, woolen breeches, a white shirt, silk bandana, a heavy, double-breasted, lined flannel coat, and a black woolen-lined driving cap with ear flaps.  Isabella recognized him as the Englishman William Haigh.  She’d had occasion to meet him once in Estes Park while he was visiting with Griff Evans.  Carrying a few of her belongings, she walked to the stage.  Jim followed alongside her, clutching her bags in each hand.

Ever the polite dandy, Haigh bowed briefly at the waist when he saw Isabella.  The two exchanged cordialities, and then she introduced him to Mountain Jim.  After expressing how honored he was to make his acquaintance, he told Jim his reputation had proceeded him and how much he would enjoy going on a hunting trip with him.  Jim was courteous and thanked the Englishman for his thoughtfulness.  Haigh extended his hand to shake Jim’s.  It was a scene Isabella recalled vividly.  “…[H]e put out a small hand cased in a perfectly fitting lemon colored kid glove,” she wrote in her memoirs.  “As the mountain man stood there in his grotesque rags and odds and ends of apparel, his gentlemanliness of deportment brought into relief the innate vulgarity of a rich parvenu.”

Once the stage driver secured Isabella’s bags on the vehicle, it was time to go.  Haigh helped Isabella into the coach while regaling her with news of England, his trip to the Rockies, and the influential people he’d come to know during his time in the American West.  The driver cracked the whip, and the team of horses lit out.  Isabella looked back to wave goodbye to the desperado she had come to know and dared to love.  Jim had mounted his ride and was trudging through the mud and snow in the opposite direction.  The dazzling sunlight broke through the thick tree line and danced on the renegade mountain man’s golden yellow hair.  Slowly, his image faded into the snowy terrain.

To learn more about Isabella Bird and her time with Rocky Mountain Jim Nugent read

The Lady and the Mountain Man

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The Lady and the Mountain Man: 

Isabella Bird, Rocky Mountain Jim, and their Unlikely Friendship

A vibrant summer sun blanketed the pristine Rocky Mountains with its far-reaching rays, reflecting lavender and amber colors on the clouds hovering over much of Estes Park.  Mountain Jim, atop his white mule, rode through the vicinity of Griff Evans’ settlement, close to the tree line.  Beaver pelts and squirrel carcasses dangled off the horn of his saddle.  Horse and rider moved slowly, almost gliding.  KA-BANG!  KA-BANG!  The sound of a shotgun roaring interrupted the serene setting.  A slug struck Jim hard, knocking him to the ground.  Five of the large, blue whistler shots plowed into his head and face.  William Brown, a hunter traveling with Jim, hurried his horse to the spot where he lay to check on his downed companion.  Jim was bleeding badly.  Riding hard to the scene from the direction of the Evans’ ranch were three riders.  Griff Evans, William Haigh, and the Earl of Dunraven himself, Windham Thomas Wyndham-Quin.  At just that moment, Dr. George Kingsley spurred his horse out of the tree line.  He’d been hunting bear and content to continue his quest when he heard the men yelling at him to help.  Dr. Kingsley obliged.

The four men were talking over one another with an inebriated Evans taking credit for the shooting when the doctor got to them.  Disregarding the chatter, he jumped off his horse and rushed to the wounded mountain man lying under a clump of aspen trees.  He quickly assessed the situation and announced to the group that one of the bullets had entered the back of the brain.  Another had gone through the bones in his nose, splintering them when it hit and when it exited.  The doctor and William transported Jim to a nearby log hut where everything was done to make the mountain of a man comfortable.  Doctor Kingsley noted in his memoirs the date Jim was shot – June 29, 1874.  “What a horrible case this would have been in a polluted war hospital,” he wrote.  “But up here 8,000 feet above sea level not a single wound festered, and all healed as healthily as the cut of a healthy schoolboy.”

Shortly after the doctor’s initial diagnosis, Mountain Jim was moved to the hospital at Fort Collins.  A second examination showed additional shots had penetrated the biceps of his left arm and his chest.  Dr. Kingsley had tended to Jim before after one desperate occasion with the grizzly.  Among the injuries he attempted to repair after the mauling was the serious scratch across the man’s right eye.  The adhesions between the lid and eye had never properly healed, and the scar tissue was quite pronounced.  “I often examined that eye of Jim’s with a view of releasing it from its too permanent curtain,” the doctor wrote in his memoirs.  “The grizzly had performed a most remarkable operation, for a bear’s paw is not exactly an instrument well adapted to eye surgery.”

To learn more about Jim Nugent and when he saw Isabella Bird next read

The Lady and the Mountain Man

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The Lady and the Mountain Man: 

Isabella Bird, Rocky Mountain Jim, and their Unlikely Friendship

Once the group reached the area near the lava beds, they collected the horses they’d left there overnight.  Jim lifted Isabella and placed her on Birdie’s back.  She guided her ride slowly over the jagged shards of rocks.  When they reached the camping grounds, Jim lifted Isabella off her horse and led her to a bed of charred wood.  In a few moments, he had a fire going, and the four huddled around the blaze.  Rogers and Downer considered continuing to Estes Park, but Jim convinced them to stay.  “Now gentlemen,” the mountain man admonished, “I want a good night’s rest, and we shan’t stir from here tonight.”  No one disagreed.  In truth, everyone was too tired to debate the matter.

Isabella made herself comfortable under a cluster of nearby trees.  After wrapping herself in a roll of blankets, she fell fast asleep.

“When I woke, the moon was high shining through silvery branches, whitening the bald Peak above, and glittering on the great abyss of snow behind, and pine logs were blazing like a bonfire in the cold still air,” Isabella wrote about the excursion.  “My feet were so icy cold that I could not sleep again, and getting some blankets to sit in and making a roll of them for my back, I sat for two hours by the camp-fire.  It was weird and gloriously beautiful.  The students [Rogers and Downer] were asleep not far off in their blankets with their feet toward the fire.  ‘Ring’ lay on one side of me with his fine head on my arm, and his master sat smoking, with the fire lighting up the handsome side of his face, and except for the tones of our voices, and an occasional crackle and splutter as a pine knot blazed up, there was no sound on the mountain side….

“Once only some wild animals prowled near the camp, when ‘Ring,’ with one bound, disappeared from my side; and the horses, which were picketed by the stream, broke their lariats, stampeded, and came rushing wildly toward the fire, and it was fully half an hour before they were caught and quiet was restored.”

A light shower of snow drifted down on the camp.  Mountain Jim stared pensively at the flakes, melting as they met the flames of the campfire.  Eventually he spoke.  He had a great deal to say.  He told Isabella of his troubled childhood and how he squandered much of his youth breaking laws and promises.  Isabella gave no indication that Jim’s tales of his misspent younger years was his way of bragging about his misdeeds.  He spoke as though he sincerely regretted his actions.  He made no excuses for whatever bad he had done but was truly repentant.  He talked about the enthusiasm he once had for life and for exploring the West.  He confessed that the spark had been replaced with anger and frustration over wealthy nobles who took possession of land to which they had no moral right.  Tells welled up in Jim’s eyes as he shared with Isabella how he felt he had wasted his years.  He was a sinner who believed redemption for him was impossible.

Isabella only listened.  His pain was real, but she wondered if the emotions bubbled to the surface out of fatigue or the need to fill the silence?  She couldn’t help but be moved by all he was admitting.  While working with her father in the church, she’d heard similar cries from those who had fallen short.  She had encountered men and women who hated their sin nature and wanted to get right with the Creator.  Some, like Isabella, believed and accepted the gift of forgiveness.  Others, however, struggled with the idea that God’s grace could transform their lawless, desperate deeds.  Jim was one of those individuals.  He grieved, and Isabella was sad for him.

To learn more about the romance between Isabella and Jim read

The Lady and the Mountain Man

Writers are not always the most social beings.  We spend so much time alone working on our craft we tend to forget what it’s like to be out in public.  I go for weeks without seeing anyone besides that guy in my house I married three decades ago who eats all my Rocky Road ice cream and spends an unsettling amount of time watching professional wrestling.  When I finally do get a chance to be out among the crowd, I’m like a German shepherd whose hasn’t seen people in a long while.  That’s why I’m a big believer in writing conferences.  Being around other writers can improve your mental and emotional health.

A major activity in the life of a writer (or at least this writer for the twenty-five plus years I’ve been writing) is attending conferences or conventions.  Surveys distributed at various writing conference around the country and reviewed by the Association of Writers and Writing programs indicate that among the many benefits of attending conferences are learning new writing techniques, improving writing skills, finding fresh ideas, and gaining new contacts.  I had to sift through several writing conferences before I found the perfect one held by Western Writers of America.

I’ve taken part in my fair share of screenwriting conferences.  They were more pitch sessions than anything else.  Usually held in hotel ballrooms in lovely downtown Burbank, California, hopeful script writers had the opportunity to sign up to pitch their screenplays to people who said they were assistant development heads for various studios when in truth they were really pages for a late-night television shows trying to break into the business just like me.  I had just won the Nicholl Fellowship Award and was feeling invincible when I attended my first pitch session.  The first so-called industry go-getter I met invited me to tell him about my work as he fed berries to the cockatoo on his shoulder.  When the bird began squawking, I found it difficult to focus.  The session took an immediate nosedive when I suggested the man’s bird might prefer to be in its cage ringing its little bell and staring at its reflection in a mirror.

Then there was the Actor’s Conference, a symposium designed for aspiring actors to connect with professional actors.  Before things went south between myself and the owner of the cockatoo, he suggested that attending the Actor’s Conference would help me be a better writer.  The idea was that I could learn how to act like the characters I was creating, and that would translate to the page.

The first panel I took part in was an acting exercise with four other pretend thespians.  We were to take our place around a poker table and imagine ourselves as dogs playing poker in a velvet painting.  I tried, but I couldn’t get into it.  First of all, dogs cannot play poker because they don’t have thumbs, and you need thumbs to shuffle and deal a deck of cards properly.  And there’s nothing remotely cute about animals with gambling problems.  It’s very sad.  As a matter of fact, not one of those dogs is smiling in those pictures, because if you look closely at those paintings, you can tell that most of them are playing with money they can’t afford to lose.  And sadder still, remember it takes seven of their dollars to make one of ours.

Thankfully, Western Writers of America conventions are void of gimmicks and pets.  Authors who attend the event are treated to panels and discussions that are truly about the craft of writing.  I tend to gravitate to those panels that focus on sales and promotions.  That kind of information is invaluable and well worth the money spent to participate.  And if you’re the kind of person who makes friends as easily as the Swiss Family Robinsons made ice, WWA conventions help authors with that, too.  Some of the best friends I have are with people I met at the convention.

If you weren’t able to take part in the festivities this year, we hope you’ll be able to attend the 2022 convention in Great Falls, Montana.  All writers suffering from severe isolation are invited.  Just think twice before bringing along any exotic birds.

Author Chris Enss details Isabella Bird and her journey to Estes Park and her “unlikely friendship” with Rocky Mountain Jim in this American West classic, The Lady and The Mountain Man.

The lure of the fabled Rocky Mountains was an irresistible force for Isabella Bird.

Like many British citizens in the late 19th century, Bird had read stories and heard tales about the majestic American range across the ocean. The air of Colorado’s high altitude offered healing properties for travelers, and its stunning peaks were magnificent sights apt for anyone’s bucket list.

For Bird, who set out from Britain on a steam ship in 1872, the prospect of a visit to the Rocky Mountains was hardly promising or simple. Bird, who had suffered serious health issues since childhood, embarked on the transcontinental journey with a wire cage around her neck, a Victorian medical solution to her weak spine and injured neck.

What’s more, Bird undertook the journey alone, a decision that defied the societal norms and expectations of the time.

“This is in the 1870s, and Bird is a single, Victorian woman in poor health traveling to America,” said author Chris Enss, whose latest book, “The Lady and the Mountain Man,” details Bird’s journey to Colorado in 1873.

Enss’s latest book detailing the history of the American West focuses on Bird’s journey to Estes Park and her “unlikely friendship” with “Rocky Mountain Jim” Nugent, a one-eyed outlaw who guides her to the top of Longs Peak. The book explores Bird’s legacy as an explorer, the colorful characters who resided in Estes Park in the late 19th century and the sometimes fatal regional struggles for land, power and influence.

At its heart, however, the book follows a theme that runs throughout Enss’s impressive oeuvre of dozens of books about the American West. The author has long focused on exploring the lives of the women who braved a new frontier in a time of unabashed sexism and structural misogyny. Isabella Bird, who’d gain a reputation as an unparalleled explorer, author, photographer, author and anthropologist, is a fitting focus for Enss, who’s long worked to spotlight the stories of the women of the West who’ve been overlooked by history.

Throughout her life, Bird’s travels spanned the globe, from Japan to Australia to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) to India, Turkey and Singapore. Her writings set the standard for international travel and cultural understanding in the 19th century; she was the first woman to be inducted into the Royal National Geographic Society.

For all of her impressive odysseys, Bird’s travels to Colorado served as a watershed in several ways, Enss said.

“The consistency throughout the book is the story of this strong woman who decided that she was going to do something regardless of what the rest of the world said she could or couldn’t do,” Enss said. “Not only were there stereotypes about what women could do in the American west, but she was also an aristocratic woman from Britain,” she added, noting that Bird defied expectations from multiple cultures.

Enss, who drew material from letters, newspaper articles and other primary sources, added that while Bird serves as the central figure of the book, “The Lady and the Mountain Man” offers readers multiple narrative tracks and simultaneous threads. As the book’s title indicates, the story explores the unique relationship between Bird and Jim Nugent, a grizzled outlaw out of a Western storybook who also boasted a penchant for poetry, literature and history. As Bird herself noted, he was a “man any woman might love but no sane woman would marry.”

Bird, who called Nugent her “dear desperado,” forged a relationship with Nugent as they ascended Longs Peak together, a harrowing journey that would’ve been challenging for even the most experienced mountaineer.

“It was incredibly difficult. They did not have any of the fineries that people have now. She speaks a lot about the difficulty in crossing the lava bed, with all the jagged rocks. Her footing wasn’t so good,” Enss said, citing reports initially spelled out in Bird’s letters to her sister at home, accounts that ultimately figured into her book “A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains.” “It was cold. There were lots of wild animals that seemed to be stalking them.”

As the pair braved those risks in the day, and bonded around the campfire at night, their relationship took on a different dimension, Enss notes. The journey offered an opportunity for both to reveal their character – they swapped verses of poetry, discussions about the Bible and meditations about Shakespeare. According to one of her letters, Nugent “told stories of his early youth, and of a great sorrow which had led him to embark on a lawless and desperate life.”

That combination of peril and intimacy left an indelible mark, Enss said.

“It results with the pair falling in love,” she said. “He drank in excess, he was crude. But at one point he had studied to be a priest. He was a poet and he could quote Shakespeare. Going up to Longs Peak in the evenings, he regaled her with his verses.”

This unlikely bond builds against a backdrop of frontier conflicts and violence. Lord Dunraven, an aristocrat who owned land in the Estes Park area, was intent on claiming large swaths of the area for hunting preserves and other purposes, wanted to get rid of Nugent and drive him from his land. That conflict would ultimately claim Nugent’s life, after Bird left Colorado for further international journeys.

“The book really is in three parts. You have the part with Isabella and Jim; there’s the Lord Dunraven portion of the story and his combative relationship; but you also have Isabella Bird, who as she’s getting healthier, tours the Rocky Mountains by herself,” Enss said, adding that journey ultimately served as a transformative experience – after her time in Colorado, Bird no longer wore the wire cage to support her neck and back. “That was unheard of in 1873 for a woman to do.”

A through-line that undergirds all elements of the book is the setting. Enss has long explored different sites and locales in the American West, but this tome offered the author the opportunity to spotlight Colorado and the Estes Park region as its own character.

“Colorado is a character in and of itself. That’s really important in this book,” she said, adding that the setting and the main character combined to make this piece unforgettable in her 50-plus book bibliography. “Of all the people who I’ve written about (more than 50 books), I’ll miss her the most. She was just an inspired human being.”

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The Lady and the Mountain Man: 

Isabella Bird, Rocky Mountain Jim, and their Unlikely Friendship

Newspaper articles from the July 13, 1873, edition of the Chicago Tribune informed travelers bound for Colorado that the “atmosphere was so transparent Pikes Peak could be seen from the streets of Denver.”  Pikes Peak was one hundred miles south of the booming city, and, truth be told on a clear day, with at least an average pair of eyes, it was impossible to make out even the dim outline of the peak.  Such exaggerations lured explorers to the area.  Any disappointment over not being able to see the highest summit of the southern front range of the Rocky Mountains from Denver was quickly forgotten when they proceeded to Colorado Springs where the Peak was clearly visible.

This was one of Isabella Bird’s coveted destinations.  For years she had heard of the beauty of the Rocky Mountains and the amazing health- giving air that surrounded the setting.  To stand at the base of the purple foothills in the snow leading to either Longs Peak or Pikes Peak for her was tantamount to drinking from the fountain of youth.  As Isabella made her way across the ocean from the Sandwich Islands to San Francisco, she could see the Colorado mountains in her mind’s eye.  The peaks in the far distance, their crests like burnished silver against the sky, were magnificent to behold.  All she’d heard about the splendor of the territory would prove accurate.  What she didn’t know then was the controversy over who owned and controlled Estes Park, the land in which the mountain range rested.

To learn more about Isabella Bird’s time in Estes Park and romance with Rocky Mountain Jim read

The Lady and the Mountain Man

Enter now to win a copy of

The Lady and the Mountain Man: 

Isabella Bird, Rocky Mountain Jim, and their Unlikely Friendship

“Thank you, Chris Enss, for this marvelous introduction to Isabella Bird, an English lady who refused to let unremitting pain keep her from exploring the American West. Isabella was a prolific writer whose reports on all she saw and experienced brought admirers from across the world to bask in the wonders of Colorado and the Rocky Mountains. Americans today will gain greater appreciation for our country, seeing it through this woman’s eyes even as she fell in love with a crusty, drink-riddled mountain man. Enss, a prolific and engaging writer in her own right, beautifully brings this woman to life.”

Two-time Western Writers of America Spur Award Winner, Carol Crigger