Jim Kjelgaard's Arizona Home

 

1238 Palo Verde Drive in Phoenix, Arizona, was Jim Kjelgaard’s home from about 1952 until his death on July 12, 1959. Kjelgaard had been suffering from back pain, which was a lifelong ailment, and what his daughter, Karen, called “incipient arthritis” and so for health reasons the family moved to Arizona from their home in Thiensville, Wisconsin. Thiensville was a small farming community north of Milwaukee and quite close to Lake Michigan.     Kjelgaard had a small office in their Phoenix home and wrote many of his best-known novels there, including, Lion Hound (1955), Desert Dog (1956), Wolf Brother (1957), Stormy (1959), and his two adult novels, The Lost Wagon (1955) and The Land is Bright (1958). Karen, in an essay, wrote: “As I grew up in Phoenix, I became more aware of how hard my father worked. It was not unusual for him to spend the entire day in his office, typing with two fingers on his old manual typewriter, then eat supper and go back to writing.” She said that Arizona’s desert “seemed like an exile after the green of Wisconsin” but the family—specifically Jim and Karen—grew to love the geography as they explored it. They soon discovered a mountain lion’s home, they learned the names of the native plants and animals, and where and how to find natural springs. This landscape inspired Kjelgaard and it can be seen in many of his later novels, including The Story of Geronimo (1958), Hi Jolly! (1959), and a few of titles listed above: Desert Dog and Wolf Brother. The photographs of Jim Kjelgaard’s final residence below are from MS Bing (dated 2014) and Google Maps (dated 2022).