Doctor at Timberline: True Tales, Travails, and Triumphs of a Pioneer Colorado Physician

“Some folks accuse me of stretching truth to the breaking point in my autobiography, but the fact is I omitted many things because I believed they would be looked upon as fabrications. I had to hold a tight rein on truth, for fear it would not be believed. And even then I seem to have strained the credulity of some readers. ” Charles Fox Gardiner, Colorado Springs Gazette, January 25, 1939 Doctor at Timberline is a collection of Gardiner’s first-hand experiences as a physician in the new state of Colorado. He changed the names of the towns and the people in these true stories in a gentlemanly effort to conceal their identities. Many years have passed since Caxton Printers first published this book in 1938 and so, we are confident that revealing the true locations Gardiner describes will not arouse any offense. Crested Butte (Silver Cup), in Gunnison County, was the young coal-mining town where he first opened his medical practice in 1883. He married Emma “Daisy” Palmer Monteith in November 1884 and they set up housekeeping in Meeker (Cowtown), in Rio Blanco County. By 1887, the Gardiner family relocated to Colorado Springs, where he became internationally known for his theories on the treatment of tuberculosis.

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