Eugene Manlove Rhodes

Eugene Manlove Rhodes (January 19, 1869 – June 27, 1934) was an American writer, nicknamed the "cowboy chronicler". He lived in south central New Mexico when the first cattle ranching and cowboys arrived in the area; when he moved to New York with his wife in 1899, he wrote stories of the American West that set the image of cowboy life in that era. He moved back to New Mexico in 1926 and continued to write novels. In 1958, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.

Biography Rhodes was born in Tecumseh, Nebraska, to Hinman Rhodes and Julia Manlove who were wed March 5, 1868 at Rushville in Schuyler County, Illinois. He moved to New Mexico with his parents in 1881 and "fell in love" with the state. In 1883, Rhodes went to work for the Bar Cross Ranch, a period of employment that would form the basis of much of his subsequent writing.

By age sixteen, he was an accomplished horseman and stonemason and road builder. He helped build the road from Engle, New Mexico, to Tularosa, New Mexico.

Rhodes was an avid reader, and he was mostly self-educated in his youth. In 1888, he studied two years at the University of the Pacific in California. He began publishing anonymous works in the college newspaper. In 1890, he was unable to continue his studies due to financial problems.

In 1899, Rhodes married May Louise Davison Purple (1871–1957), a widow with two sons. Purple was also a writer, and in an article written for Reader's Digest described how Rhodes proposed to her the first day he met her and how he turned up for their marriage bearing evidence of a recent fight, including a torn ear; she also recorded that Rhodes brought her two marriage gifts, a silk scarf and a lady's pearl handle revolver. One western writer describing Pasó Por Aquí as "the finest western ever written".

Respected author Jack Schaefer wrote of Rhodes' that, "The man's writing stimulates fanaticism, cultism. To the faithful, he could do no wrong... Certainly he mastered his material as few others in the field, in any field, have done."

An article in The New York Times expressed the view that, "Rhodes is the peer of Owen Wister in portraying the cowboy in his code, and often, though briefly and incidentally, the equal of such factual narrators as Andy Adams and Will James in presenting the mode of his working life. In variety and scope, he is the best of the four."

Film adaptions include The Wallop (1921) from Rhodes' The Girl He Left Behind Him and The Desire of the Moth; Sure Fire (1921) from Rhodes story Bransford of Rainbow Bridge; and Four Faces West (1949) from Pasó Por Aquí, one of very few westerns to not feature a gunfight.

Rhodes appears as a character in the historical fiction novel Hard Country (2012) by Michael McGarrity.

Land of enchantment Rhodes is credited with inventing the phrase 'Land of Enchantment' to describe New Mexico. In 1911, he published A Number of Things, a story in which he described the Socorro area in 1900 as "A land of mighty mountains, far seen, gloriously tinted, misty opal, blue and amethyst; a land of enchantment and mystery. Those same opalescent hills, seen closer, are decked with barbaric colors—reds, yellows or pinks, brown or green or gray; but, from afar, shapes, and colors ebb and flow, altered daily, hourly, by subtle sorcery of atmosphere, distance, and angle; deepening, fading combining into new and fantastic forms and hues—to melt again as swiftly into others yet more bewildering."

He also used the phrase in the 1914 novelette Bransford In Arcadia, and it was later made the official state nickname of New Mexico.

His wife lived to 1957. His wife is buried in the Riverside Cemetery at Apalachin.

Books Good Men and True. Illustrations by H. T. Dunn, 1910 Bransford in Arcadia 1914 Desire of the Moth and The Come On, illustrations by H.T. Dunn, 1916 West is West, 1917 Stepsons of Light, 1921 Say now Shibboleth, 1921 Copper Streak Trail 1922 Once in the Saddle, and Pasó por aquí, 1927 Trusty Knaves, 1933 Penalosa, 1934 Beyond the Desert, 1934 The Proud Sheriff, 1935 Little World Waddies, 1946 Best Novels and Stories; edited by Frank V. Dearing. Introduction by J. Frank Dobie, 1949 Sunset Land, 1955 Bar Cross Man: The Life & Personal Writings of Eugene Manlove Rhodes [by] W.H. Hutchinson. 1956 Rhodes Reader; Stories of Virgins, Villains, and Varmints. Selected by W. H. Hutchinson, 1957 Recognition: The Poems of Eugene Manlove Rhodes / illustrated by Martha Julian, 1997