Call of the Canyon

In 1906, novelist Zane Grey visited the Arizona Territory for the first time. The Southwestern landscape fired his imagination; after a few return trips, he began writing Riders of the Purple Sage, published by Harper and Brothers in 1912. It racked up blockbuster sales to become one of the most successful novels of the American West. By the early 1920s, Grey’s books were outsold only by McGuffey’s Readers for young children and the Bible. The huge success of Riders of the Purple Sage