BELLE TURNBULL PAPERS

Belle Turnbull was born in Hamilton, New York on December 9, 1881. At the age of 9, her family moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado because of her father's health. Her father, George Butler Turnbull, became the principal of Colorado Springs High School.

Turnbull graduated from Vassar in 1904. She took a job teaching at Westfield High School in western New York. Then in 1909, she taught at an all-boys' school in Buffalo, New York. In 1910, Turnbull returned to Colorado Springs to teach English at Colorado Springs High School until 1936.

In 1937, Turnbull retired from teaching and moved to Frisco, Colorado with her friend, fellow poet and author, Helen Rich. Two years later, they moved to a cabin in Breckenridge, Colorado, where they remained for the rest of their lives. During World War II, Turnbull worked as a clerk typist for the War Price and Rationing Board in Breckenridge. She resigned in 1944 to devote all of her time to writing.

Turnbull started writing poetry as a child. By 1933 she had a number of poems published in the Saturday Review of Literature. In 1938, Turnbull received the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize from Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. In 1940, she published Goldboat, a mining saga told in verse. Turnbull published a prose novel, The Far Side of the Hill, in 1953; a book of verse, Tenmile Range, in 1957; and another poetry book, Trails, in 1968.

Turnbull died in November 1970 in Denver, Colorado. Her remains were cremated. Breckenridge, Colorado, still honors her work as a poet as evidenced by an August 2007 reading of her poetry published in Belle Turnbull: Voice of the Mountains, an anthology by Karen Fischer and Robert D. McCracken.