Portrait of a Prospector

R. Bruce Craig is an independent historian and biographer. A former national park ranger and second winner of the prestigious Freeman Tilden Award for Outstanding National Park Interpretation (1982), Craig also served as Northeast Regional Director of National Parks Conservation Association, and in stints as Executive Director of the Association of National Park Cooperating Associations (now Association of Partners for Public Lands), the National Parks Trust, and the National Coalition for History. Today he lives in Atlantic Canada, where he teaches American History at the University of Prince Edward Island. Craig is the editor of the fiftieth anniversary edition of Freeman Tilden's classic work, Interpreting Our Heritage, and author of Treasonable Doubt: The Harry Dexter White Spy Case and The Apprenticeship of Alger Hiss.

The historical significance of Ed Schieffelin's life goes well beyond his Tombstone silver discovery, as demonstrated in this compelling autobiography, expertly edited and annotated by R. Bruce Craig."" - Robert M. Utley, author of A Life Wild and Perilous: Mountain Men and the Paths to the Pacific""Portrait of a Prospector engagingly illuminates the life of a particular U.S. frontier type, the gold and silver prospector of the late nineteenth century West, and adds to our understanding of the prospecting culture of the era. Ed Schieffelin's account is especially revealing as the story of a man who started prospecting at ten years old and did not stop until his death, a man who learned to go his own way rather than follow the rushes."" - Paula Mitchell Marks, author of Precious Dust: The North American Gold Rush Era, 1848 - 1900 ""What makes Portrait of a Prospector worth reading is that it is derived directly from Schieffelin's memoirs... [the book] is well worth reading from an Alaskan historical perspective, because Schieffelin's frank observations constitute a valuable contribution about how mainly indigenous people lived in the lower Yukon River basin the 1880s."" - Tom Bundtzen, Alaska History""Collecting the words of an exceptional figure who embodied the western frontier, Craig offers readers insight into the mentality of prospector adventures during an age of discovery and limitless potential."" - Mary Beth Jones, Book Beat