American novelist Emerson Hough was born in Newton, IA, in 1857. After graduating from Newton High School in 1875 he attended the University of Iowa, attaining a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1880. He later studied law and was admitted to the Iowa bar in 1882, which was also the year in which he had his first work published--an article in "Forest and Stream" titled "Far From the Madding Crowd".

Moving to White Oaks, NM, he opened a law practice there and also wrote for the local newspaper, "The Golden Era". He returned to Newton 18 months later due to his mother's illness, where he wrote "The Story of the Outlaw: A Study of the Western Desperado". Among the outlaws and lawmen covered in the book were Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. When Garrett killed Billy in New Mexico, Hough moved back there and struck up a friendship with Garrett.

Hough moved around the country working for various newspapers. In 1899 he was hired as western editor for "Forest and Stream" magazine. The publisher of that publication, George Bird Grinnell, was a noted conservationist--he founded the Audubon Society--and Hough was an enthusiastic adherent of that movement. "Forest and Stream" assigned him to survey Yellowstone Natonal Park in the winter of 1893, providing him with a guide and arranging for a military escort from Fort Yellowstone to accompany them. Hough's survey revealed that, among other things, the park's buffalo herd, which was thought to number close to 1000, was barely 100, mainly due to poaching. Hough's revelations resulted in many eastern newspapers taking up the anti-poaching cause, and in 1894, due largely to Hough's efforts, the US Congress passed a law making poaching in national parks a criminal offense, which up to that time it wasn't. Hough and others also lobbied for the creation of a national park system, and the National Park Service was eventually created in 1916.

Hough had his first novel, "The Mississippi Bubble", published in 1902, which became a best-seller. Many novels followed, all set in the west and fiercely protective of the land and its people, often railing against the moneyed interests that wished to exploit them. To that end he worked on the presidential campaign of Theodore Roosevelt in the 1916 elections. During World War I he served as a captain in the US Army's intelligence service.

He died in Evanston, IL, in 1923, shortly after seeing the premiere of The Covered Wagon (1923), an epic film based on his 1922 best-selling novel of the same name.

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Emerson Hough

Writer