Archives West Finding Aid

Robert Olney Easton, prominent author and environmental activist, was born in San Francisco, California in 1915. He was the son of Robert Easton Sr. and Ethel Olney Easton. He was also the grandson of Warren Olney, one of the founders of the Sierra Club. Easton attended Stanford University in 1933 and 1934 and earned his bachelor’s degree in English from Harvard University in 1938. Between 1938 and 1939, Easton did postgraduate work at Stanford University.

Easton’s literary career began in 1939, when he became associate editor of Coast Magazine. He became a professional free-lance writer in 1941 and published a series of short stories in The Atlantic a year later. Easton’s first book, The Happy Man, was published in 1943. A modern western novel based upon his experiences as a California ranch hand, it was well received by critics and established him as a literary talent. Easton enlisted in the Army during World War II and saw combat in Germany.

Between 1946 and 1950, Easton co-founded and co-edited the Lampasas (Texas) Dispatch. He continued to free-lance throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, contributing short stories to magazines such as Colliers, True, and The Saturday Evening Post. Of particular interest are his stories about Fred Meyer Schroder, an American adventurer who traveled in California, the Yukon, and China, between the 1890s and 1917. Published in True and The Saturday Evening Post, these stories were the foundation of his later works on Schroder.

Easton broadened the scope of his writing during the 1960s. Lord of the Beasts, a biography of American adventurer Charles “Buffalo” Jones co-written with MacKenzie Brown, was published in 1961. In 1963, his article Guns of the American West appeared in The Book of the American West. That same year, he wrote the unpublished article Right Turn in the Rockies, a study of the political far right in the Rocky Mountain region. The Hearing, a novel about the Red Scare of the 1950s, and California Condor: Vanishing American, a book concerning the threatened extinction of the California condor (co-written with Dick Smith), were published in 1964. Easton also edited the anthology Max Brand’s Best Stories (1967) and with MacKenzie Brown, co-edited Bullying the Moqui (1969), which concerned Charles F. Lummis and his exposure of abuses on the Hopi Indian Reservation.

Easton continued to be a productive writer for the duration of his life. Max Brand: The Big Westerner (1970) is a biography of Easton’s father-in-law Frederick Faust, a famed western writer. Black Tide: The Santa Barbara Oil Spill and Its Consequences (1972) was his second work exemplifying his concern with environmental issues. After years of research, Easton wrote two books in succession about Fred Meyer Schroder, Guns, Gold, and Caravans (1978) and China Caravans: An American Adventurer in Old China (1982). Easton turned to historical fiction in the 1980s and 1990s, writing the Saga of California trilogy: This Promised Land (1982), The Power and the Glory (1989), and Blood and Money (1998). He also co-wrote and co-edited three works with his wife Jane Easton: Love and War (1991), Max Brand’s Best Poems (1992), and Collected Stories of Max Brand (1994).

Robert Easton married Jane Faust, the daughter of western writer Frederick Faust (Max Brand) in 1940. They had four daughters: Joan, Katherine, Ellen, and Jane. In addition to his literary activity, Easton was an English instructor at Santa Barbara City College (1959-1965) and a writing and publishing consultant with the U.S. Naval Civil Engineering Laboratory in Port Hueme, California (1961-1969). He was involved in efforts to save the California condor from extinction, helping to found refuges for this bird at Sisquoc Sanctuary (1937) and Los Padres National Forest (1968). He was also active in the civic and environmental affairs of Santa Barbara, California, his adopted hometown.

Robert Olney Easton passed away on November 14, 1999.