Researching During a Pandemic

Regina Scott

Every book takes research. Even memoirs might require the author to dig into the historical milieu of the era that shaped their views and customs. As a writer of historical fiction, I prefer hands on research—museums, re-enactments, and recreations of the times—followed by first-hand accounts of people living in that period. You can imagine my excitement when my editor agreed to a proposal highlighting one of the first women to climb Mt. Rainier. The gates of the national park are 45 minutes from my front door, and the riches of the Washington State Historical Society archives are 30 minutes in the other direction.


And none of that was available during the pandemic!


Every library was closed, every museum shuttered. Even the park closed for a time. What’s a writer to do?


Rely on the work of trusted others:


Google books and original sources. Anyone can put anything up on the internet, and I for one am thankful! Google has digitized a number of books spanning history, commerce, and the sciences. So have some universities. For example, the University of Michigan Library digitized the Illustrated Guide Book to Mount Tacoma, Piece County, Washington, which was published the exact month and year my heroine makes her historic climb. It included not only the route from Tacoma to Rainier (called Mt. Tacoma by some at that time), but where to stay along the way and which route to take to reach the summit safely. It also included a set of advertisements for local businesses offering to sell climbing gear, host visitors, and develop photographs. A goldmine!

Online collections. Likewise, many museums and universities have made photographs and photographic reproductions of their artifacts available online. I was able to find photographs of the major streets in my characters’ home city at the time the story was set. I was shocked to find them lined with telephone poles! When my production editor questioned the use of telephones in the story, I was able to prove they did indeed exist.

Tomes by recognized experts. If there is an obscure happening in history, someone somewhere has likely written about it. Digging deeper into scholarly works, I discovered a book on the financial Panic of 1893 and how it affected Washington State specifically. I also located a wealth of information on the Suffrage Movement in the Pacific Northwest.

Reference librarians. Though sometimes harder to find now, specialty librarians may be part of some library systems. I was thankful to reach one in at our State Library, who confirmed the location of a historical figure I wanted to use in the book. Another librarian was able to confirm that there were no suffrage societies in Tacoma at the time, so I was safe to create my own.


We live in a time of great wealth of information. Sometimes it just takes a little thinking outside the box to dig out that information and enrich your writing.

Award-winning author Regina Scott is the author of more than 50 works of warm, witty historical fiction including A Distance Too Grand and Nothing Short of Wondrous. Her writing has won praise from Booklist and Library Journal, and she was twice awarded the

prestigious RT Book Reviews best book of the year in her category. A devotee of

history, she has learned to fence, driven four-in-hand, and sailed on a tall ship, all in

the name of research. She and her husband of 30 years live south of Tacoma,

Washington, on the way to Mt. Rainier. Her latest release, A View Most Glorious, features a headstrong beauty who must rely on a rough mountain guide to get her to the top of Mt. Rainier so she can bring attention to women’s suffrage and avoid marrying the man her mother chose. But her mountain man has hidden potential—and so, she discovers, does their future together.

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Discovering the Secrets of Wonderland

Regina Scott

I love research. I love delving deep into history to discover interesting tidbits about how people lived, worked, worshipped, entertained themselves, fell in love, married, and raised their children. The information I gather helps me flesh out my characters, bolster my plot, and bring settings to life. And I never know when one of those tidbits is going to spark a new story entirely!

Such was the case for my October 2020 release, Nothing Short of Wondrous, the second in my American Wonders Collection. The novels are all set in the history surrounding our national parks.

I was researching information on the Army Corps of Engineers and their survey crews for my 2019 release, A Distance Too Grand, set in 1873 Arizona Territory. The characters in that book undertake the first Army survey of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. U.S. Cavalry officers often accompanied these surveys for protection. One line in a research book tantalized me.

“The U.S. Cavalry was also called in to manage Yellowstone National Park.”

Interesting.

So, I dug some more. Yellowstone National Park was our first national park. There was nothing like it in any other nation at that time either. So, our leaders in Washington, D.C., weren’t too sure how to manage it. They knew it must be protected so that future generations would be able to enjoy its splendors too. But the first superintendent of the park attempted to manage the millions of acres from across the country.

That did not go well.

Subsequent superintendents moved out West but also struggled to find ways to protect land spread so far and wide and so varied: mountains, rivers, waterfalls, lakes, and the amazing thermal features for which the park is famous. By 1886, vandals were carving their names in the formations. Poachers were killing game in the park or starting wildfires that drove the animals beyond the boundaries, where they could be killed with impunity. Even well-meaning visitors broke off pieces of the geysers to take away as souvenirs.

Enter Troop M of the 1st U.S. Cavalry. On the direction of Congress, they rode into Yellowstone in August 1886, determined to protect and defend the area the public was coming to know as Wonderland. I discovered the reports of Captain Moses Harris, the first commanding officer, available online. They make for fascinating reading. Through them, I learned the kinds of structures built to accommodate the cavalrymen, how Harris organized them to cover so large a territory, and the problems they encountered along the way.

Including the fact that the first snow fell in September that year, right in the middle of my story. You can bet I worked that into the story!

Yellowstone National Park also has its own Heritage and Research Center, and many of its treasures are digitized, giving me more insight into how park tourism and hotels were managed in those early days. I also located the e-mail address of the park historian, who graciously answered my nitpicky questions about how visitors were fed when there was no hunting in the park (the “meat wagon” came through from outside the park on the regular basis!) and how the early tour companies functioned (one driver, one group of tourists, together for days). The National Park Service even has a digitized set of recordings, so you can hear what geysers and mud pots sound like. I’d visited Yellowstone in the past, but reminders of what it’s like to tour Wonderland only whet my appetite to go again.

Ah, research! Nothing like it to discover the secrets of your story.

 Regina Scott is the author of more than 50 works of warm, witty historical romance, including A Distance Too Grand. Her writing has won praise from Booklist and Library Journal, and she was twice awarded the prestigious RT Book Reviews best book of the year in her category. A devotee of history, she has learned to fence, driven four-in-hand, and sailed on a tall ship, all in the name of research. She and her husband of 30 years live south of Tacoma, Washington, on the way to Mt. Ranier.

Visit Regina at: https://www.reginascott.com/