The Tenmile Range

With her ability to convey the aesthetic purity of an image, we believe that Belle Turnbull is the poet laureate of the Continental Divide, the voice of the mountains. Born in New York in 1882, Turnbull moved to Colorado Springs, CO, with her family at the age of eight. She attended Vassar College and upon graduation, taught high school English in upstate New York for several years. Around 1910, she returned to Colorado Springs and taught high school there until her retirement in 1937. After retiring, she moved to Summit County, CO, high in the Rocky Mountains, where she lived until her death in 1970. Turnbull was enchanted with the mountains and their people. Her love for them never wavered, and she was at her best when writing about them. The Tenmile Range is an homage to those mountains in whose shadows she lived the last three decades of her life. These poems were written over a period of many years and reflect her great skill as a poet. The Tenmile Range was originally published in 1957 by Prairie Press of Iowa City. In 1938, Turnbull received the coveted Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize from Poetry: A Magazine of Verse for a selection of her Probus poems, including "Time as a Wellspring." Another recipient of the award that year was Dylan Thomas.