Much of his writing was influenced by his first-hand practical knowledge of the American West and the historical realities and locations depicted in his books—in the mines, on the trails, in the mountains, and on the rivers.

[2][3][4] David Lavender was born and raised on a cattle ranch 20 miles north of Telluride, Colorado, then a fading mining town.

After graduating in 1931, he briefly attended Stanford Law School before returning to western Colorado to help his stepfather Edgar Lavender run his cattle ranch.

[1] Lavender then moved to Denver, where he worked for an advertising agency and wrote fiction for popular pulp magazines and juvenile publications like Boys' Life.

[2] The American West of Lavender's early years was still a place of ranchers, miners, cowboys, prospectors, and mountaineers—for most men, a world of backbreaking, lonely, and dangerous work.

In One Man's West, however, Lavender did not focus on "the cold and the cruel fatigue", but instead wrote about the "multitude of tiny things which in their sum make up the elemental poetry of rock and ice and snow".

[citation needed] In 1948, Lavender followed up his successful memoir with The Big Divide, a history of the Rocky Mountain region that established his reputation as a serious historian.

[4] In 1954, Lavender published Bent's Fort, an historic landmark of the American West on the upper Arkansas River in present-day southeastern Colorado.

Lavender's history of these men and their role in opening up the southwestern region of North America has been compared to the works of eminent historians such as Francis Parkman and William H.

[5] In 1958, Lavender wrote The Trail to Santa Fe, about Zebulon Pike and his exploration of the American Southwest in present-day Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico.

His books De Soto, Coronado, Cabrillo: Explorers of the Northern Mystery (1992), The Santa Fe Trail (1995), Pipe Spring and the Arizona Strip (1997), Mother Earth, Father Sky: Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest (1998), and Climax at Buena Vista: The Decisive Battle of the Mexican-American War (2003) all contributed to documenting the history of the region.

[4] He received two Guggenheim Fellowships to study the fur trade,[1] and the Commonwealth Club of California gave him four medals for his histories of Colorado, the Pacific Northwest, early San Francisco, and the Lewis and Clark expedition.