Archives West Finding Aid

John Lindsey Blackford was born on June 28, 1906 in Lewistown, Montana. He was the younger of two sons born to James McNeal Blackford II and his wife, Maude Lindsey Blackford. The Blackford family moved to Claremore, Oklahoma in October 1910, there James II set up a successful law practice. The family returned to Montana in August 1911 and settled in the Lincoln County seat of Libby in the northwest corner of the state. John explored the great outdoors of Montana by hiking, boating and fishing.

John excelled at school and graduated with honors from Libby High School at 16. He then waited a year while his older brother James III finished high school, in the fall of 1923 they both entered Stanford University and majored in law. John contracted staphylococcus from an infection during his summer break between his junior and senior years at Stanford. The infection caused permanent nerve damage and he was unable to finish his college education.

John changed his career and pursued photography and ornithology because of his passion for the outdoors. He developed a reputation as a naturalist and an author of articles on birds illustrated with his own photographs. He wrote for national magazines such as Nature, Desert (later Arizona Highways), Condor, The Audubon Magazine, American Forest, Pacific Discovery, The Living Wilderness, and Natural History. He also wrote nature stories for children that were published in My Weekly Reader, which many grade school children studied and enjoyed. In 1956, he published Western Wonderlands: A Guide to Bird Habitats of the Western United States.

From the mid-1930s until the late 1950s, John traveled the western portion of the United States extensively. He especially loved the Southwest, where he would spend months camping, photographing and writing articles, but his health prevented him from any further travel.

Throughout his life John continued to study and learn through extensive reading and correspondence courses from Stanford University. His favorite subjects, besides ornithology, were great religions of the world, anthropology and world history. He also did extensive research on health and medical issues. John Lindsey Blackford died in Roseburg, Oregon on April 24, 1984 at 77.