Margaret Jo Prouty papers

Margaret Jo Prouty papers, circa 1927-1991

Overview of the Collection

Creator: Prouty, Margaret Jo
Title: Margaret Jo Prouty papers
Dates: circa 1927-1991 (inclusive)
Date of CollectionDate of Collection
Quantity: 5 cubic ft. (11 boxes)
Collection Number: 09896
Summary: Margaret Jo Prouty was a physician and mountaineer. From the 1920s to 1991, she was a world traveler and mountain climber, photographing and writing of her adventures. This collection contains her slides, photographs, writings and scrapbooks that document her life long love of the outdoors.
Repository: American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming
American Heritage Center
University of Wyoming
1000 E. University Ave.
Dept. 3924
Laramie, WY
82071
Telephone: 3077663756
ahcref@uwyo.edu
Access Restrictions: Access Restrictions
There are no access restrictions on the materials for research purposes, and the collection is open to the public.
Languages: English
Sponsor: The creation of the EAD-version of this finding aid was made possible through a grant from the National Historic Publications and Records Commission.

Historical NoteReturn to Top

Margaret Jo Prouty, born 1908, graduated from the University of Nebraska Medical School in 1942. She worked as a pediatrician from 1943 to her retirement in 1973 at Jackson Clinic in Madison, Wisconsin, specializing in ulcers in children. Prouty was also an avid mountaineer. As a college student working summers in Estes Park, Colorado, by 1928, she had climbed several of Colorado’s peaks, including Long’s Peak at 14,256 feet. In the 1980s, she could count to her credit 400 ascents of peaks between 10,000 and 20,000 feet in twenty-two countries.

Prouty was a licensed Rocky Mountain National Park climbing guide and graduate of the Swiss School of Mountaineering. She was the official physician for the Cordillera Blanca Expedition to Peru, 1958, and the Ruwenzori Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon and Kilimanjaro, Africa, 1960, and was the unofficial expedition physician on the Trek from Darjeeling, India, to the border of Tibet, Sikkim and Bhutan, 1978. She led the 1965 Mt. Everest Trek, Nepal, and the 1969 Annapurna Trek, Nepal. Among her other climbs were 14,000 feet Matterhorn, Switzerland, 1949; 17,000 feet Popocatepetl, Mexico, 1952, and 18,000 feet Orizaba, Mexico, 1952.

Prouty was also an accomplished writer and photographer, contributing numerous articles to Summit magazine on mountaineering medicine and her climbing experiences. Well in to her retirement, she climbed, hiked, and led others on wilderness trips in the western United States and Canada until 1989. She was still actively involved in wilderness activities when she suffered a stroke five months before her death in 1992.

Content DescriptionReturn to Top

This collection is divided into the slides and photographs Margaret Jo Prouty took on her mountaineering expeditions; her writings, which consist of diaries, journals, and published article manuscripts; and scrapbooks with photographs that contain more information about her mountaineering.

Prouty’s earliest visual documentation of her mountaineering is a scrapbook of black and white photographs beginning in the 1920s in the Estes Park area of Colorado. Through the 1940s, she depended upon her own black and white photography, purchased photographs (sometimes in color) and other printed materials that she collected in scrapbooks to describe her early ascents. Her Mexico trek in 1952 was her first use of color slides. She then documented all her mountaineering activity with slides until 1978. These slides are kept in her original order in this collection, by year, by trek name, and by slide presentation. They are the bulk of this collection. They include countries of Mexico, Africa, New Zealand, Austria, Nepal, South America, Yugoslavia, Switzerland, Canada, Siberia, Tibet, Antarctica, and the mountainous areas of the western United States. She photographed her 1989 Peru and Ecuador trek, while her last trek in 1991 to Hawaii, she documented in a final scrapbook.

Prouty began keeping five-year diaries in 1934 describing her life as a college student during the Great Depression, the effects of the Dust Bowl in Nebraska, how she and her friends spent their leisure time and how she was able to successfully overcome the financial and physical hardships of medical school. Her diary entries stop at 1952. She organized her journals as Volumes I-V, covering the years 1948-1987. Much of this material is, in turn, used for the many articles, also included in this collection that she published, mostly for Summit, a mountaineering magazine. In these articles she described the thrill she felt in climbing, the life threatening escapes she and others had on some treks, her continual refinement of mountaineering medicine and the vivid descriptions of locales and cultures she encountered.

Use of the CollectionReturn to Top

Restrictions on Use

The researcher assumes full responsibility for observing all copyright, property, and libel laws as they apply.

Preferred Citation

Item Description, Box Number, Folder Number, Margaret Jo Prouty Papers, ca. 1927-1991, Collection Number 09896, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

Administrative InformationReturn to Top

Related Materials

There are no other known archival collections created by Margaret Jo Prouty at the date of processing.

Acquisition Information

Papers received from Dr. Maxine Bennett in 1992.

Processing Note

Processing Information

The collection was processed by Rita Burleson in October 2004.

Detailed Description of the CollectionReturn to Top

Series I. Slides and Photographs, 1952-ca. 1989Return to Top

Container(s)		Description	Dates
Box	Folder
1	1	Mexico	1952
Folder
2		Tetons, California and Oregon	1954
3		Tetons	1955
4		Colorado	1956
5		Mexico	1957
6		Peru	1958
7		Wind River	1959
8		Africa	1960
Box	Folder
2	1	Wind River	1962
Folders
2-3		New Zealand	1962-1963
Folder
4		Austria	1964
Folders
5-6		Nepal	1965
Folder
7		South America	1967
Box	Folder
3	1	South America	1967
Folders
2-3		Yugoslavia and Switzerland	1968
4-5		Nepal	1969
6-7		South America	1971
Folder
8		Canada	1972
9		North Rim, Zion, Brice and Canyon de Chelly	1973
Box	Folder
4	1	Mexico	1974
Folder
2		Sea of Cortez, Baja California	1975
Folders
3-4		Trans Siberia and Far East	1975
Folder
5		Far East Slide Presentation	1975
6		Quetica, Canada	1975
Box	Folders
5	1-3	World Trip Antarctica	1976-1977
Folder
4		World Trip Slide Presentation	1976-1977
5		Bhutan and Sikkim	1978
6		Bhutan and Sikkim Slide Presentation	1978
7		Various Places Slide Presentation	1958-1978
Box	Folders
6	1-2	Peru and Ecuador	ca. 1989

Series II. Writings of Margaret Jo Prouty, 1934-1987, undatedReturn to Top

Container(s)		Description	Dates
		Sub-series 1. Diaries
Box	Folder
6	3	Five-year Diaries	1934-1943
Folder
4		Five-year Diaries	1944-1952
		Sub-series 2. Mountaineering Journals
Box	Folder
7	1	Volume I	1948-1959
Folder
2		Volume II	1960-1965
3		Volume III	1967-1973
4		Volume IV	1973-1980
5		Volume V	1986-1987
		Sub-series 3. Articles
Box	Folder
8	1	Andean Adventure	1958
Folder
2		Backpack Adventure in the Mountains of Peru	1959
3		Cat Around the University	No Date
4		Diary of Mountaineering in Mexico	1952
5		Hiking Article for Encyclopedia of Sports Science and Medicine	1971
6		Ladies I Have Known	1966
7		Lake Perron Backpack	1958
8		Kilimanjaro	1960
9		Most Beautiful Walk in the World	1963
10		Mountain Climbing First Aid	1983
11		Mountains and Women	ca. 1940s
12		Mountains of the Moon	1960
13		Mt. Everest Trek	ca. 1966
14		My Most Interesting Trip	ca. 1949
15		Solo Climb	1957
16		Three Memsahibs Trek to Everest	ca. 1965
17		To The Editor	1959
18		Wonderful Land of the Sherpas	No Date

Series III. Miscellaneous Information and Scrapbooks, ca. 1920s-1992Return to Top

Container(s)		Description	Dates
		Sub-series 1. Miscellaneous Information
Box	Folder
8	19	Alumni Achievement Award	1973
Folder
20		Award Photocopies and Originals	1968-1992
21		Car Records	1988-1991
22		Jackie Johnson Maughan Correspondence, Chart of Ascents	1982
23		Miscellaneous	1973-1980
24		News Clip	1970
25		Photographs	ca. 1920s-1942
26		Segments of "The Coyote" Yearbook, Nebraska Wesleyan University with Prouty Pictures
		Sub-series 2. Scrapbooks
Box
9		Colorado	1946
		Mountains and Me, Jo Prouty, Europe	1949
		Wyoming and Colorado	1954
Box
10		Estes Park, Colorado	ca.1928
		Northwestern United States	1948
		Mexico	1952
		Iceland	1986
		Hawaii	1991
Box
11		Two Scrapbooks: Newspaper Clippings of Mountain Climbing

Names and SubjectsReturn to Top

Subject Terms

Mountaineering expeditions--Cordillera Blanca (Peru).
Mountaineering expeditions--Ruwenzori (Congo and Uganda).
Mountaineering--Afghanistan.
Mountaineering--Austria.
Mountaineering--Bolivia.
Mountaineering--Canada.
Mountaineering--New Zealand.
Mountaineering--Pakistan.
Mountaineering--South Pole.
Mountaineering--Yugoslavia.
Mountianeering guides (Persons).

Personal Names

Glatthard, Arnold.

Corporate Names

Swiss School of Mountaineering.

Geographical Names

Annapurna (Nepal).
Antarctica.
Aypamayo (Peru).
Bhutan.
Blanca, Cordillera (Peru).
Darjeeling (India).
Deception Island (Antarctica).
Everest, Mount (China and Nepal).
Grand Tetons (Wyo. and Idaho).
Kilimanjaro, Mount (Tanzania).
Long’s Peak (Colo.)
Matterhorn (Switzerland and Italy).
Mountains of the Moon (Congo and Uganda).
Orizaba Peak (Mexico).
Popocatepetl (Mexico).
Rocky Mountain National Park (Colo.)
Ruwenzori Mountains (Congo and Uganda).
Siberia, Eastern (Russia).
Sikkim (India).
Wind River Range (Wyo.)

Form or Genre Terms

Diaries.
Journals.
Manuscripts.
Photographs.
Scrapbooks.
Slides.

Occupations

Women mountaineers.

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