Have you ever wondered what your city looked like 120-140 years ago?

 

Authors have a lot of information they need to create when developing a new story, often with just their imagination. We name characters and give them physical features and a cultural heritage. Then we invent problems for them to overcome—both to achieve their original goal and to make the relationship they discovered along the way have a happy ending. For many stories, we need to do research to learn about a new profession or hobby so the characters are presented like living breathing people.

To avoid being confined by the physical restraints of a particular town or city, I often make up locations so I can put the mountains or beach where I want it without having a reader point out a possible error, because the place I chose happens to be that person’s hometown. So, what’s an author to do?

One method is embarking on personal research. Traveling to all the places I write about would cost more money than I earn in royalties. For one series, I was already flying from California to Texas to attend a writers’ retreat and do a drive-by visual check on the house we still own there. I tacked on an extra day and walked the streets of a nearby small town, taking notes about creeks, old buildings, a cemetery, businesses, etc. All that information was used in my Dorado, Texas and Sugar and Spice Bakery series.

BUT several years ago, I discovered Sanborn Insurance Maps that are saved in the Library of Congress. These maps came into existence when more and more businesses started insuring their properties. Not as detailed as a surveyor’s plot drawing say of the lot or acreage your house is on, these maps do depict all the physical structures apparent when the surveyor visited the site. Often a city map from the 1890s will have five or six pages. These are great because an author can learn the street names, see where underground pipes exist, and determine where the biggest concentration of businesses was. I’ve discovered water and electrical plants present earlier than I originally imagined.

Here are two maps of a town called Manitou Springs, Colorado. I renamed it Spur Springs and used it as the setting for three stories, the most recent being The Bride Who Tends Sheep. I learned the town was built on both sides of a creek that ran through it. I also am amazed that not all structures are squared off or perpendicular to the road they face. So different from how our neighborhoods look today. Here's a rundown of what the colors mean: pink represents a brick or tile building; yellow is for wood construction; blue for stone, concrete, or cinder block.

To find a map for your city, put Sanborn Insurance Maps into the search bar for your browser. Once on the site, enter the name and state for the desired location and then explore. I’d love to hear what you discover.

BLURB:

Fall 1876, Colorado

Arrosa Cristobal tends a flock of forty sheep on government land near the city of Cherry Creek. She stays as close to town as she can to check in with her laundress mother who she helps support until her death a month earlier. A ransacking of her caravan while she visited town makes Arrosa feel vulnerable. She sets out on the thirty-five mile trip to Spur Springs to join her estranged brother, Jakombe. Maybe they can combine their herds.

Cameron McPherson, a Scottish rancher, is the head of the Spur Springs cattleman group. He’s struggled to keep the members in check from attempting to push out the Cristobal sheep ranch on the outskirts of town. But when he sees a new unfamiliar flock drawing close, he has to confront this interloper and hopefully steer her and her flock away from town before another rancher sees her. But the minute he meets her and hears where she is headed, he hesitates, not wanting to be the one who informs her of Jakome’s death. His protective instincts rise toward this woman who appears to be all alone in the world.

Can these two strong individuals on the opposite sides of grazing rights find common ground?

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How Much Social Commentary Should Historical Romances Include?

Most people pick up a fiction book to be entertained and escape into another world for a few hours. They want to think of the problems wrestled with by others. Even if the reader isn’t looking to specifically learn anything new, the author can use the vehicle of the novel to provide information that leads the reader to further reflection on a topic. Of course, the details have to be subtle, or the author risks the reader setting aside the book due to a lecturing tone. Novels written about events in the current times cannot escape containing bits of social commentary, because the author sets obstacles familiar to contemporary readers before his or her characters and guides them through the problem-solving process.  

Historical authors may have the same goal but have to research what situations were ongoing in the time period being written about. Culture clashes have existed since the first peoples moved out from their secular group to explore what was beyond that next hill or across the nearby stream and encountered those from another area. In the settling of the American West, one of the biggest clashes came over grazing rights and, by default, water rights. Although the grazing lands were public, because sheep eat the grass down almost to dirt level, insufficient forage was left behind after a herd moved through an area. This issue put the cattle ranchers and sheep herders on opposing sides, and often violence resulted. Over the fifty-year period starting in 1870, 120 armed engagements occurred resulting in the deaths of 54 men and between 50,000 and 100,000 sheep.

Even within the cattle industry, different views about who had rights to the public grazing lands existed. The conflict between free grazers and a powerful rancher was depicted in the 2004 movie, Open Range, starring Kevin Costner, Annette Benning, and Robert Duvall.

I used this well-known animosity between cattlemen and sheepherders for building a recent story set in 1887 Aspen. Similarly, other writers have used the theme of Romeo and Juliet or the feud of the Hatfield and McCoys as the spine of their stories. Another goal in my story planning was to relay that those with opposing habits might also possess unique skills that could prove helpful if a person looked past the prejudice.

As with many of my stories, I also included a comedic layer to counter-balance the serious elements. In this case, dogs served that role, and I contrasted the highly trained shepherding dogs owned by the heroine with the rambunctious dogs owned by the hero.

Is learning about social attitudes of past times one of the reasons you read historical romances? (an electronic copy of my Christmas set novella goes to a random pick of one of the people leaving a comment)

BLURB for Silent Signals:

After losing half his herd in the Great Blizzard of 1886, rancher Konrad Werner needs to safeguard his cattle. Tomboy Anora Huxley trains the Australian Shepherds and Kelpies that run the family’s sheep herd. Although cattlemen and shepherds are at odds, the pair discovers common interests. A threat is overheard, and Konrad rides out to Anora’s ranch to protect her. The tense situation reveals their true feelings. Will Anora be swayed by family loyalty, or will she listen to her heart that responds to Konrad’s silent signals?

~~~~~

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