Ella Young - Later Life

Later Life

In 1928, Young's book The Wonder-Smith and His Son, illustrated by Boris Artzybasheff, became a Newbery Honor Book (runner-up). During the 1920s, she occasionally visited Halcyon, California, a Theosophical colony near San Luis Obispo. While living in a cabin behind John Varian's house there, Young finished writing The Tangle-Coated Horse and Other Tales, a 1930 Newbery Honor Book. In Halcyon, her eclectic circle of friends included Ansel Adams, whom she had first met in either 1928 or 1929 in San Francisco through their mutual friend, Albert M. Bender. She traveled with Adams and his wife, Virginia, to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1929, spending time with friends and visiting artists at the Taos art colony, and staying with Mabel Dodge Luhan. In Taos, Young also visited with Georgia O'Keeffe. A photograph of Young and Virginia Adams appears in Ansel Adams's autobiography. Adams recalls that Young and fellow writer Mary Hunter Austin did not get along very well together, but that conservationist Dorothy Erskine was one of Young's good friends.

In 1932, The Unicorn with Silver Shoes was released, illustrated by Robert Lawson. Young published her autobiography, Flowering Dusk: Things Remembered Accurately and Inaccurately in 1945. Later, she found particular affinity in the California Redwoods After battling cancer, Young was found dead in her home in Oceano on July 23, 1956. She was cremated, and in October, her ashes were scattered in a redwood grove. A grave marker is located in the Santa Maria Cemetery District, Santa Maria, California. Young left the bulk of her estate to the Save-the-Redwoods League.