A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains

1881

Special Collections F782 R6 B59 1881

New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons

‘For the benefit of other lady travellers, I wish to explain that my ‘Hawaiian riding dress’ is the ‘American Lady’s Mountain Dress,’ a half-fitting jacket, a skirt reaching to the ankles, and full Turkish trousers gathered into frills falling over the boots – a thoroughly serviceable and feminine costume for mountaineering and other rough travelling, as in the Alps or any other part of the world.’ So wrote Isabella Bird Bishop (1831-1904) in the beginning of her, Life in the Rocky Mountains. While ‘rough travelling’, she met outlaw Jim Nugent, climbed Long’s Peak (the highest mountain in the region), and lived rough at Estes Park. Bishop’s book, along with twelve other travel books she wrote, gained her the distinction of being the first woman Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1892.