Mabel Barbee Lee

Mabel Barbee Lee (1884-1979) was an American writer, teacher at Victor High School, and administrator of Colorado College, the University of California in Berkeley, and other institutions. [Lee, Mabel Barbee: "Cripple Creek Days", page 262. Doubleday & Company, 1958 (LOC=58-12050)]

Mabel was born in Silver Reef, Utah in 1884, and later grew up in Cripple Creek, Colorado. She attended Colorado College before she started her career as a teacher. Later she married Howe Lee and followed him to mining areas across the continent. He died in and influenza outbreak and she went on to become Dean of Women at Colorado College from 1922 to 1929. She then went on to be administrator at Bennington College, Radcliffe, Whitman, and the University of California, Berkeley. She then returned to Colorado and visited Cripple Creek, Colorado in order to write "Cripple Creek Days." She went on to write a few more books before she died in 1979. There is an archive of her manuscripts in the Western History and Genealogy Department at the Denver Public Library and another, with her correspondence with Lowell Thomas at the Colorado College Library.

In 1930 she wrote an article titled Censoring the Conduct of College Women that was published in Atlantic Monthly. [http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/193004/college-girls retrieved May 18, 2008 [http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/193004/college-girls] ]

In 1959 she appeared on This is Your Life as a part of the life of Lowell Thomas. [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1635496/ retrieved May 18, 2008 [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1635496/] ]

Published works

*"Cripple Creek Days", 1958 Forward by Lowell Thomas
*"And Suddenly It's Evening, A Fragment of Life", 1963
*"The Rainbow Years", 1966
*"Back in Cripple Creek", 1968
*"The Gardens in My Life; An Intimate Memoir", 1970

Awards

*1958: Spur Award for Best Nonfiction, "Cripple Creek Days"

References