Louis and Kathy L'Amour, near the location where Heller with a Gun was being filmed as Heller in Pink Tights. (c. 1959-60)

n 1956 Louis L'Amour married Katherine Elizabeth Adams, an aspiring actress. The daughter of a resort developer and silent movie star, Kathy had grown up in the deserts and mountains of Southern California. Together they traveled all over the west searching out locations and doing research for Louis' books. In 1961 their son Beau was born and in 1964 they had a daughter, Angelique.

The1960s were a productive time for Louis. He developed his famous Sackett family series, traveled extensively to promote books and movies, and, for the first time in his life, bought a house. He was often invited to speak at public forums and held book signings for large crowds all across the country.

The 1970s were years of financial success, despite this, however, Louis signed a thirty book contract with Bantam to keep himself employed and on a deadline. Louis expanded the Sackett family series to include the family's beginnings on the American continent and also began the process of weaving in tales of the Chantry and Talon clans too. The vision of a large matrix of fiction interwoven with the history of the United States and Canada began to appear in his work. Plans, many that did not come to fruition for another ten years, for writing historical fiction (like The Walking Drum, a story written in the1960s but not sold until the mid '80s.) and even science or fantasy fiction (The Haunted Mesa) were carefully made. By 1973 his new found wealth allowed Louis to move into a better neighborhood in West Los Angeles. Louis finally felt independent and secure for the first time in his adult life. He was sixty-five years old.

Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award presented to Louis L'Amour May 26, 1972

Besides pleasing hundreds of fans, Louis won the Western Writers of America's Golden Spur Award for "Down the Long Hills", North Dakota's Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award, his novels "Hondo" and "Flint" are voted places in the 25 best Western Novels of all time. Five years after out selling John Steinbeck's total of 41,300,000 copies (a Bantam record) Louis L'Amour sold his one hundred millionth book and had won the Western Writer's of America's Golden Saddleman Award. In 1983 U.S. Congress voted him the National Gold Medal, and a year later the Medal of Freedom. Louis' books have been translated into over fifteen foreign languages and are sold in English in almost a dozen countries.

The Strater Hotel, since 1887 Durango, Colorado

Louis loved to collect books and finally he had both the space and the money to do so. His private library grew from some 3,000 to nearly 10,000 books and half again as many journals and periodicals.True to his athletic past he would spend an hour or two every day lifting weights, skipping rope and punching a heavy bag, first in a paved area of his small back yard in Hollywood, later, in the garage that he had converted into a gymnasium. Starting in 1966 he would take his family to spend the summer in Durango, CO, a place he had visited briefly with a mining buddy in the in the late 1920s. For over ten years they spent the month of August at the Strater Hotel, Louis dividing his time between writing in a corner room over the Diamond Belle Saloon and hiking in the La Plata or San Juan Mountains. In later years he participated in the Presidential Committee on Space, a Ute/Commanche peace treaty, and was on the National Board of the Library of Congress' Center for the Book.

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