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PrintRiding and Writing: Doris Platts
When Doris Platts retired from teaching school in New Jersey in 1978, she moved across the country to began a career as a Wyoming cowgirl, historian, and writer. Platts, now eighty, worked at Fish Creek and Trail Creek ranches, wrangling and leading pack trips into the wilderness. She also spent years researching area history and wrote seven books on such subjects as Teton Pass, wolves, Green River cowboys, and outlaws. Platts spent hours on horseback until age seventy-nine, when she retired her riding boots after putting her beloved horse to sleep. Her age also caught up to her. “I always said when I can’t put the saddle on by myself, it’s time to quit,” she says. Platts lives outside Wilson, where she tends three acres she purchased years ago from her close friend Virginia Huidekoper.
Q: How did you get interested in local history and writing?
A: I was working and riding up at Trail Creek Ranch, and I got very interested in the history of Teton Pass. I was riding the trails, and I thought, “Hey, how did the first people ever come here and over the top of that pass?”
Q: All your books are written by hand. Is it difficult to avoid mistakes, such as misspellings?
A: It wasn’t hard. Sometimes I did it in pencil on regular notebook paper, and if I messed up, there was always White-Out. Plus, I was a schoolteacher, and I taught manuscript writing. People like the books in my handwriting because it’s easier for the old folks to read without their glasses.
Q: What are you working on these days?
A: I’ve been helping other people out with their research, like a historian friend in the Pinedale area and the Grand Teton Lodge Company. I’m not really doing anything for myself. I’ve done all I’m going to do. Now I do my chores, and I spend one night a week in the sheep wagon in my backyard. That’s fun.
Q: It’s well known that you’re a horsewoman. Were you ever a skier?
A: When I first came out, I got a season pass for Snow King. I got good enough [that] I could come down from the top, and then I thought, “That’s enough.” I’m really a horse person. I didn’t want to get hurt and not be able to ride.
Q: What’s your favorite time of the year in Jackson Hole?
A: Fall, because the days are warm, the nights are crisp, and the leaves are beautiful.
