Louis L'Amour Centennial

Louis L'Amour was born Louis Dearborn LaMoore on March 22, 1908, the last of seven children. His father, Louis Charles LaMoore, was a veterarian. For the first fifteen years of his life, he lived in the farming community of Jamestown, North Dakota. As a young man, L'Amour wandered and had many adventures. He skinned cattle in west Texas, baled hay in the Pecos valley of New Mexico, worked in the mines of Arizona, California, and Nevada, and in the saw mills and lumber yards of Oregon and Washington. He also had a sporadic career as a professional boxer. His stories and characters were created from his experiences. He had a life-long love of learning. He often bragged that from 1928 until 1942 he read more than 150 non-fiction books a year. He had intended to be a poet, but he was unsuccessful. He started writing short stories. He sold a short story called Anything for a Pal to a pulp magazine and launched his writing career. His first stories were mostly adventures. After he returned from World War II, the market was interested in mysteries and westerns. L'Lamour started writing his beloved westerns. The success of the film Hondo based on his short story Gift of Cochise gave L'Amour a standing and a fan base. L'Amour won many awards, including,the Western Writers of America's Golden Spur Award for Down the Long Hills,the North Dakota's Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award, and the Golden Saddleman Award from the Western Writers of America. In 1983, the U.S. Congress awarded L'Amour the National Gold Medal, and a year later, the Medal of Freedom. He died in 1988, and his books continue to be published and read widely.
In his memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, L'Amour wrote: "Our family was one in which everybody was constantly reading....All of us had library cards and they were always in use...Reading was as natural to us as breathing."