Back in the ‘60s, Gibbs wanted to make books but he didn’t want to live in New York City. When they first set up shop in the barn in Layton, they only had access to the upper level since the main floor was still housing cows and chickens….
I first met Gibbs Smith outside the auditorium of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming in 1993. I introduced myself and handed him my first book, Old Masters of the West. He looked at the black-and-white cover image I’d taken of cowboy poet Wally McCrae then flipped through the photo documentary essays on old-school master craftspeople I’d interviewed around the Rocky Mountain West: a boot maker, a leather worker, a cowboy hat maker, a woodworker, a horsehair braider, a spur maker, a native beadworker. I’d even a found a stagecoach builder in the Four Corners area of Colorado. Gibbs handed me his card and thus started my 30-year, twelve-books-and-counting relationship with Gibbs Smith, Publisher.
This week I paid a visit to the vintage red barn and assorted outbuildings that house the company. The suburbs of Salt Lake City and Ogden have grown up around the old farm, but the historic buildings remain: a Victorian farmhouse, a couple of very old log cabins, and a long, low red barn, circa 1916. The first thing you see when you arrive is a pasture with sheep who come running if they think you have food. A black and white cat serves as greeter on the porch. The door to the editorial staff’s offices is festooned with stickers and surrounded by a door frame with wildlife tracks. Quirky placards bear messages like “No where in particular” and the name Chateau Fiasco. All this belies the seriousness with which those inside take their calling: to make beautiful, interesting, informative books. (They really are making the world a better place.)
Back in the ‘60s, Gibbs wanted to make books but he didn’t want to live in New York City. With the encouragement of Alfred A. Knopf, Sr., in 1969 he went west and founded a publishing company, first in Santa Barbara then ultimately back home to Utah with his wife, Catherine. (When they first set up shop in the barn in Layton, they only had access to the upper level since the main floor was still housing cows and chickens.)
Gibbs was a visionary who liked to drive around the West discovering places and people. He’d attend a lecture somewhere or read an article in a local paper then approach the speaker or author and ask if they wanted to write a book. He stumbled across the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada early on and was the first to publish the words of those range-riding philosophers. He once came for dinner at my home and, after a meal highlighting my husband’s honey, asked if we wanted to collaborate on ‘a honey cookbook with beekeeping lore’, including recipes, how to’s and vintage photos. The ideas seemed to come to him fully formed.
A talented amateur painter, Gibbs made a study of the best independent bookstores around the country and painted his top picks, which ultimately became Books & Mortar; A Celebration of the Local Bookstore. “The book business is a calling more than a business,” he told an interviewer from Publisher’s Weekly in 2014, a few years before his death. I realize how lucky I am to have worked with the same editors and staff for three decades, and to publish with people who remain passionate and optimistic about books, despite the vagaries and challenges of the book industry. Gibbs may be gone but his legacy endures, in the countless titles published, and in a dedicated team that still create books in a red barn in Utah.
