January 15, 2023 @ 1:00 pm – 2:15 pm
Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood attended grade school and Smith College together, spent nine months on a grand tour of Europe in 1910 and then, bored with society luncheons and chaperoned balls and not yet ready for marriage, they went off to teach the children of homesteaders in a remote schoolhouse on the Western slope of Colorado. They traveled on the new railroad over the Continental Divide and by wagon to Elkhead, a tiny settlement far from the nearest town.
Woodruff was the grandmother of New Yorker executive editor Dorothy Wickenden. Nearly 100 years later, Wickenden found the buoyant, detailed, colorful letters the two women wrote to their families.
Drawing upon the letters, interviews with descendants, research about these vanished communities and trips to the region, Wickenden creates a compelling, original saga about the two intrepid young women and the “settling up” of the West. Read the West Book Club meets monthly. Select books available for purchase in The Museum Store (15% discount for Museum members). Refreshments provided. $9, $6 for Museum members. Register by January 12.
