The story Bird writes as Estes Park’s first tourist is laced with hints of the unlikely romance between herself, a straight-laced Victorian woman, and the one-eyed scoundrel named Rocky Mountain Jim. That book would not only set Bird up for a life of travel, but would help put Estes Park on the map before it held anything more than a few squatters and seasonal hunters. “A Ladies Life in the Rockies,” would actually be her fourth book, but it was the bestselling and most popular of all the books she wrote. There she would also have an unlikely romance with a one-eyed desperado and write a book that would make her an international bestselling author. She was on her way to seek the healthy atmosphere of the Rocky Mountains, as well as adventure. Prescribed travel for her health, Bird would stay in Cheyenne just long enough to help out a mother with a newborn baby, hiring a young woman to look after them. Wyoming wasn’t yet a state, nor was Colorado, when Isabella Bird dropped by Cheyenne in 1873 on a Union Pacific train, right in the midst of a cholera outbreak.
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