On our recent research trip to Colorado for my next book, Warren and I visited the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver. The Brown Palace Hotel is an historic landmark in the city, having been built in 1895. The hotel was one of the most luxurious hotels in Denver, and from the moment it opened, rich people patronized the Brown when they stayed in Denver.
The Atrium Lobby is designed in the Italian Renaissance style, with Florentine arches around the Mezzanine and filigreed iron panels on the open balconies. The lobby walls are made of polished golden onyx. The Brown Palace Hotel will be featured in my next book, when my heroine and her father stay there during their visit to Denver. Warren and I posed on the grand staircase leading up from the lobby. My writer’s imagination conjured up elegantly-clad women in long dresses and men in dark suits and top hats climbing these very stairs long ago.
Our travels in Colorado covered some of the territory that will be part of the setting of my fourth book. The Rocky Mountains were known for their silver, gold and uranium mines. My hero in this book will be the owner of a uranium mine, so we drove up into the mountains to see first-hand the breath-taking scenery in the mountains. I was awestruck by the Rocky Mountain beauty, and these pics are just a sample of the scenery.
Steam trains were an important part of transportation in the 1800s and early 1900s. Trains carried passengers and freight from one side of the country to the other. In my fourth book, a train such as one of these transported my heroine and her father from New York to Denver. Some of the passenger cars were quite luxurious. Warren and I rode on a steam train so I could write about the experience more knowledgeably.
I hope our trip West will make the fourth book of my ‘Frontier Hearts Saga’ richer in detail and color.
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