On March 22, 1908, American author best known for his work in the Western genre Louis L'Amour is born in Jamestown, North Dakota. L'Amour would spend much of his younger years traveling across the country as an itinerant worker and around the world as a merchant seaman. He eventually decided to settle down and pursue a career as a writer in the 1930s, though he would serve in the US Army during World War II. After the war, L'Amour's writing career took off as he successfully published many of his short stories and novels, including a small number of installments in the the Hopalong Cassidy novels. Over the course of his career, Louis L'Amour would publish over 100 books, including 89 novels and 14 short story collections, that remain popular with readers and fans of the western genre across the world. Many of his works have been adapted for film and television, including the short store "The Gift of Cochise" which was adapted into the the film Hondo starring John Wayne.

Louis L'Amour passed away from lung cancer on June 10, 1988, in Los Angeles, California.