T. H. Watkins

Watkins headshot from p-book back cover
Born in Loma Linda, California, Thomas Henry Watkins (1936-2000) grew up on the edge of the Mojave desert and became an outdoorsman because the family went camping in southern California. He attended San Bernardino Valley College and Redlands University. After graduating he moved to San Francisco, where he worked in the mail room at the San Francisco Chronicle while trying to write novels. He attended graduate history classes at San Francisco State.

In the 1960s he worked for
American West magazine, where he met the novelist and conservationist Wallace Stegner. In 1969, Watkins became editor of the magazine. In 1976 Mr. Watkins moved to New York, where he spent six years as an editor at American Heritage. In 1982 he became editor of the Wilderness Society’s Wilderness magazine in Washington DC, which he went on to lead for 15 years. In 1997, after Wilderness cut back publication to one issue per year, he moved to Bozeman, Montana where he became the Wallace Stegner distinguished professor of Western American studies at Montana State University.

Watkins was a prolific writer on environmental issues: he authored 28 books, first about San Francisco’s history and architecture and later
Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes, 1874-1952, a 1990 finalist for the National Book Award, The Lands No One Knows: America and the Public Domain and The Hungry Years: A Narrative History of the Great Depression. Watkins wrote hundreds of magazine articles for publications such as the Washington Post, the New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler and National Geographic.


Click on each cover for details about each eBook:

Harold Ickes eBook 1 cover Harold Ickes eBook 2 cover