Rhodes was born in
Tecumseh, Nebraska, to Hinman Rhodes and Julia Manlove who were wed March 5, 1868 at Rushville in Schuyler County, Illinois. He moved to
New Mexico with his parents in 1881 and "fell in love" with the state. In 1883, Rhodes went to work for the Bar Cross Ranch, a period of employment that would form the basis of much of his subsequent writing. By age sixteen, he was an accomplished horseman and stonemason and road builder. He helped build the road from
Engle, New Mexico, to
Tularosa, New Mexico. Rhodes was an avid reader, and he was mostly self-educated in his youth. In 1888, he studied two years at the
University of the Pacific in
California. He began publishing anonymous works in the college newspaper. In 1890, he was unable to continue his studies due to financial problems. In 1899, Rhodes married May Louise Davison Purple (1871-1957), a widow with two sons. Purple was also a writer, and in an article written for ''
Reader's Digest'' described how Rhodes proposed to her the first day he met her and how he turned up for their marriage bearing evidence of a recent fight, including a torn ear; she also recorded that Rhodes brought her two marriage gifts, a silk scarf and a lady's pearl handle revolver. One western writer describing
Pasó Por Aquí as "the finest western ever written". Respected author
Jack Schaefer wrote of Rhodes' that, "The man's writing stimulates fanaticism, cultism. To the faithful, he could do no wrong... Certainly he mastered his material as few others in the field, in any field, have done." An article in
The New York Times expressed the view that, "Rhodes is the peer of
Owen Wister in portraying the cowboy in his code, and often, though briefly and incidentally, the equal of such factual narrators as
Andy Adams and Will James in presenting the mode of his working life. In variety and scope, he is the best of the four." Film adaptions include
The Wallop (1921) from Rhodes'
The Girl He Left Behind Him and
The Desire of the Moth;
Sure Fire (1921) from Rhodes story
Bransford of Rainbow Bridge; and
Four Faces West (1949) from
Pasó Por Aquí, one of very few westerns to not feature a gunfight. Rhodes appears as a character in the historical fiction novel
Hard Country (2012) by
Michael McGarrity.
Land of enchantment Rhodes is credited with inventing the phrase 'Land of Enchantment' to describe New Mexico. In 1911, he published
A Number of Things, a story in which he described the
Socorro area in 1900 as "A land of mighty mountains, far seen, gloriously tinted, misty opal, blue and amethyst; a land of enchantment and mystery. Those same opalescent hills, seen closer, are decked with barbaric colors—reds, yellows or pinks, brown or green or gray; but, from afar, shapes, and colors ebb and flow, altered daily, hourly, by subtle sorcery of atmosphere, distance, and angle; deepening, fading combining into new and fantastic forms and hues—to melt again as swiftly into others yet more bewildering." He also used the phrase in the 1914 novelette
Bransford In Arcadia, and it was later made the official state nickname of New Mexico. In 1937 the New Mexico Tourist Bureau published a sixteen-page pamphlet Welcome to the Land of Enchantment. The nickname also appeared on a road map that year. It had appeared earlier on
Lilian Whiting's The Land of Enchantment: From Pike's Peak to the Pacific, published 1906, a dedication to Major
John Wesley Powell, "the great explorer."
Papers Alamogordo Public Library holds a collection of books, correspondence, clippings, magazines, and original manuscripts related to Rhodes. The library's Eugene Manlove Rhodes Room houses this collection and the library's other Southwest books. ==Death==