Dr. Margaret Long

Quick Facts

Place of Birth:

Early women in medicine, well-connected woman in MA & CO, Wrote history/guidebook od DEVA: Shadow of the Arrow, Likely a queer woman, had live-in partners & never married

Date of Birth:

Oct. 28, 1873

Date of Death:

Aug. 31, 1957

Margaret Long was born to Mary Woodward Glover (1845-1882) and John Davis Long (d. 1915), the 28th Governor of Massachusetts. She attended the Derby Academy in Hingham, MA before attending Smith College. There, she became good friends with Dorothy Reed, a woman also pursuing a medical career. They had a close friendship and when Reed went to Johns Hopkins in 1895 to become a doctor, she wrote Long encouraging her to come despite the challenges of becoming a doctor as a woman at the end of the nineteenth century. Long graduated from Smith College in 1895 and traveled Europe for a short while before taking courses at MIT to prepare for a medical career, eventually enrolling at Johns Hopkins three years after Reed enrolled. She graduated in 1903, serving as a nurse at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Brooklyn during the Spanish-American War before completing her program.  

Long never married and lived many times with other women she was close with, eventually buying a home and settling in a part of Denver, Colorado that came to be defined by queer community. Records of the long term relationships Long had with various woman throughout her life— Reed, Martin, Gale, and Elsie Pratt— depict a life of deeply intimate relationships between unmarried women, often the best evidence historians have for recovering histories of queer women. Anne Martin and Long were good friends with Jane Addams and other prominent American women believed to have relationships outside of a traditional heterosexual framework.  

After contracting tuberculosis, she moved to Denver, CO in 1905, where she practiced medicine until her retirement in 1930. In retirement, Long discovered a passion for the West and the Overland trails crisscrossing the desert landscapes that many people used to migrate West in the mid-1800s. She spent many years driving the overland trails, including attempts to find and follow the path of the Death Valley ‘49ers. She began exploring DEVA in 1921 and continued to visit through 1950. While exploring Beatty, NV, Long met Anne Martin, a Nevada suffragist and Senate hopeful. Martin and Long spent many months exploring Death Valley alone together and Long was an active assistant in Martin’s campaigns. In 1941, Long published her book on Death Valley, The Shadow of the Arrow. 

The Shadow of the Arrow documents both the landscapes and the histories of the region in a manner similar to that of Perkins in White Heart of the Mojave, but with significantly more research conducted in and around the area. It contains a variety of small vignettes that Long revised and expanded upon in 1950 for the second edition. The book traces Long and Martin’s multiple journeys throughout Death Valley while also pieces together the trail of the Death Valley ‘49ers. By the end of her book, Long makes clear that Mrs. Juliet Brier was the motivation for her adventures in the Death Valley region. The book is lined with admiration and celebration of Brier, demonstrating a connection spanning 100 years of women surviving the desert despite the odds.