Idaho Commission for Libraries

Stump Ranch Pioneer (1942), an autobiographical account by Nelle Portrey Davis, chronicles how Davis and her family acquired land in the Idaho panhandle in 1936 after their ranch in eastern Colorado failed in the dustbowl. The book is full of optimism about the value of hard work and simple, homey life, and about Americans' ability to be self-sufficient and neighborly in the face of Depression hardship.

Nelle Portrey Davis was born in Sidney, Nebraska in 1901. She became an active freelance writer for home and women's magazines and a wife and mother. Stump Ranch Pioneer was written at the request of the New York publisher Dodd, Mead, and Company after a sketch about the ranch appeared in the New York Times Magazine. Davis lived in northern Idaho and eastern Washington until her death in 1986.

Theme Essay

Read the Tough Paradise essay on Stump Ranch Pioneer.

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