Grandma Ida

19 year old John Lawson and his wife, 17 year old Ingabar, traveled across the ocean in 1865 in search of a new life from the poverty of Sweden to the free land in America. They endured many hardships and the loss of three children to build a ranch in the unforgiving, Rocky Mountains, wilderness of Colorado. As the years of hardship took its toll on them, their daughter, Ida and her husband, Charles Dawson took over the running of the ranch. As other ranchers came they worked together to build a life for their families. They grieved together as the measles epidemic took the lives of many of their children, they endured the depression, weather, and starvation, but they never gave up. Then the Bureau of Land Management and the Water Conservancy came, threatening them to leave so their valley could make room for a new reservoir to be built. They fought with everything they had; finally they traveled to Washington D.C. asking for help to save their valley. They gained an ally from the most unlikely source. The inspiration for this book came from the stories I heard about my grandparents who homesteaded in the northern wilderness of Minnesota, during the late 1890's. Their love endured for 60 years. They never once thought of quitting. In my retirement I have the time to fulfill my passion for writing and the history that needed to be told of our pioneers.