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Paul Dayton Bailey was born in American Fork, Utah, on 12 July 1906. He left home at the age of 13, and traveled the rails until 1922, when he returned to Salt Lake City and enrolled at the University of Utah. To pay for school, he worked as a stable keeper, a hospital orderly, and a reporter for the
Still pursuing a career in Journalism, Bailey also worked as a reporter for the
While he was actively running Westernlore Press, Bailey published many of his own books, as well as books by other western authors such as Robert Utley, Arthur Woodward, Max Evans, Harry James, and Pearl Baker. Bailey's books included
In all, Bailey wrote and published over forty books on western history, as well as innumerable articles, book reviews, and tributes. He was in great demand as a speaker, and often gave talks to local and national organizations. He was a founding member of Westerners International, a member of the Los Angeles Corral of Westerners, Death Valley 49ers, E Clampus Vitus, and Western Writers of America, where he served as President in 1979-1980.
After a fire wiped out Westernlore's inventory in 1973, Lynn Bailey took control of the business from his aging father and moved the press to Tucson, Arizona. After a long illness, Evelyn Bailey died in 1981. Paul Bailey died in November 1987, and was buried by his wife in Fillmore.
The papers of Paul Dayton Bailey (1906-1987) consist of approximately 30 linear feet of materials. They were donated to the Utah State Historical Society by Lynn Bailey after his father's death in November 1987.
Box 1 contains personal items such as passports, medical records, tax records, Evelyn Bailey materials, a single diary kept by Paul Bailey, and other miscellaneous personal materials. Box 2 contains business records that were not retained by Lynn Bailey at the time of donation. These consist of a small amount of material on the
The largest single part of the collection, and in many ways the most valuable, informative, and interesting, is the correspondence found in Boxes 17-22. All of Bailey's personal and business correspondence (often indistinguishable) is filed in this section of the papers, arranged chronologically by date. The only exception to this arrangement is the correspondence pertaining to Bailey's tenure as President of Western Writers of America, which is filed with other organizational materials in Box 5. Boxes 17-18 are arranged by day; the rest of the correspondence is only arranged by month. In addition, correspondence from 1970-1986 was arranged but not placed in acid free folders and boxes, due to lack of proper archival materials.. It is, however, arranged in the same fashion (chronologically by months) as the aforementioned correspondence. Bailey was a prolific letter writer, and there are probably over 3,000 letters in this section. Included are letters to such well-known western writers as Art Woodward, Robert Utley, Frank Robertson, Max Evans, Samuel Taylor, Harry James, and Randall Henderson.
Paul Dayton Bailey Papers, ca. 1940-1980, Utah State Historical Society.
Gift of Lynn Bailey
The Paul Dayton Bailey Papers are the physical property of the Utah Historical Society, Salt Lake City, Utah. Literary rights, including copyright, may belong to the authors or their heirs and assigns. Please contact the Historical Society for information regarding specific use of this collection.
Photographs have been removed and filed as