Louis L"Amour was born on March 22, 1908, in Jamestown, North Dakota. His father, Louis Charles, was a veterinarian and farm machinery salesman and was also involved in local politics. Charles served as alderman of Jamestown's largest ward for many years as well as deputy sheriff, but he lost his mayoral race.
L"Amour married Katherine Elizabeth Adams, on February 19, 1956. They had two children: Beau Dearborn and Angelique Gabrielle (Contemporary Authors, 25).
Young Louie enjoyed playing cowboys and Indians, and roughhoused in the family barn. He did more than his share of reading, particularly G.A. Henty, an Englishman who wrote of wars through the nineteenth century. His work ethic was instilled by his parents. The L"Amour family library encompassed some five hundred books, among them the works of Whittier, Lowell, Longfellow, and Poe, as well as popular American and English writers. The youngest of the L"Amour children, Louie remembered reading a five-volume Collier's History of the World while he was small enough to sit in his father's lap.
His serious reading began at twelve with a collection of biographies titled The Genius of Solitude. A book of natural history followed, which he tried unsuccessfully to locate years later for his children (Contemporary Authors, 25). During adolescence, L"Amour immersed himself in books of chemistry, mineralogy, geology, and the history of aircraft. His concentrated self-education resulted in boredom with school. L"Amour left school and Jamestown at fifteen, after completing the tenth grade. Since crop failures were common in North Dakota, and his father's livelihood was linked to the farming community, he decided to find his niche elsewhere. By hitchhiking and riding the rails, he arrived in Oklahoma City to visit an older brother, who was the governor's secretary, but he soon moved on (Hall). .
"By then I was broke and I got a job in West Texas skinning dead cattle that died from a prolonged drought.