Irene Dakin Paden

Adelaide Irene Dakin Paden (October 30, 1888 August 5, 1974) was an American historian who researched westward expansion trails. She wrote three books – The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, Prairie Schooner Detours (1949), and The Big Oak Flat Road to Yosemite (1959) – and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955. Biography Adelaide Irene Dakin was born on October 30, 1888, in Santa Cruz, California. She married William Guy Paden in Pleasanton on June 15, 1908, and they later had one son; and they remained married until his death on April 6, 1954.

In the 1920s, she and Herbert Eugene Bolton researched what became the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail. In 1943, she published The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, Paden also did illustrations for the book.

In 1948, she published an edited diary, The Journal of Madison Berryman Moorman, 1850-1851. for "historical and bibliographical studies of the exploration and settlement of Oregon and California". She and Margaret E. Schlichtmann co-authored The Big Oak Flat Road to Yosemite (1959), which focuses on the California State Route 120 section of the same name; Paden herself wrote the book based on Schlichtmann's notes.

Paden died on August 5, 1974, in Oakland, California.