Mary Hunter Austin

Mary Hunter Austin (September 9, 1868 – August 13, 1934) was an American writer. One of the early nature writers of the American Southwest, her classic The Land of Little Rain (1903) describes the fauna, flora, and people of the region between the High Sierra and the Mojave Desert of southern California.

Mary Hunter Austin was born on September 9, 1868, in Carlinville, Illinois (the fourth of six children) to Susannah (née Graham) and George Hunter. She graduated from Blackburn College in 1888. Her family moved to California in the same year and established a homestead in the San Joaquin Valley.

She married Stafford Wallace Austin on May 18, 1891, in Bakersfield, California. He was from Hawaii, a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, a United States General Land Office employee, and, later, a Potash War lawyer.

For 17 years, Austin made a special study of the lives of the indigenous peoples of the Mojave Desert. Her publications set forth the intimate knowledge she thus acquired. She was a prolific novelist, poet, critic, and playwright, as well as an early feminist and defender of Native American and Spanish-American rights.

Austin is best known for her tribute to the deserts of California, The Land of Little Rain (1903). Her play The Arrow Maker, dealing with Indian life, was produced at the New Theatre (New York) in 1911, the same year she published a rhapsodic tribute to her acquaintance H. G. Wells as a producer of "informing, vitalizing, indispensable books" in the American Magazine.

Austin and her husband were involved in the local California Water Wars, after which the water of Owens Valley eventually was drained to supply Los Angeles.

When the battle was lost, after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Stafford moved to Death Valley and Mary relocated to the art colony at Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. There Austin was part of the cultural circle that included Jack London, Ambrose Bierce, Harry Leon Wilson, George Sterling, Nora May French, Arnold Genthe, James Hopper, Alice MacGowan, Joaquin Miller, Gelett Burgess, Sinclair Lewis, and Xavier Martinez. Two years after developing a friendship with Austin in 1904, Sterling enticed her to join him in Carmel.

In 1906, she had a tree house constructed, that she called “Wick-i-up”, built by M.J. Murphy, based on a design by San Francisco architect Louis Christian Mullgardt. She wrote much of her writings from this tree house. Austin hired Murphy in 1907 to create a Craftsman-style cottage she called "Rose Cottage." The property is located at the intersection of 4th Avenue and Monte Verde Street. The cottage has gardens and two gates with paths leading to it. At this cottage, she entertained her friends, including London, Sterling, and Lewis. Today, the cottage is listed as the Mary Austin House with the Carmel Inventory Of Historic Resources, and was recorded with the Department of Parks and Recreation as significant under California register criterion as the home of one of the bohemian founders of the artist colony at Carmel.