Grey’s honeymoon took him to the West for the first time, but though awed by the scenic splendor, he felt unsatisfied by the lack of experiences suitable for use in his novels. After attending a lecture by C. T. "Buffalo" Jones, famed western hunter and guide, Grey arranged for a
mountain lion hunting trip to the North rim of the
Grand Canyon. He brought along a ‘portable’ camera with the intention of documenting his trips in order to prove the veracity of his adventures. This and a second trip proved arduous and dangerous to the tenderfoot, but Grey learned much from his rough compatriot adventurers, and he gained the confidence and authenticity to write convincing about the West, its characters, and its landscape. Treacherous river crossings, unpredictable beasts, bone chilling cold, searing heat, parching thirst, bad water, irascible tempers, and heroic cooperation all became real to him.
Upon returning home in 1909, Grey tried to convert his experiences into a series of short stories but again met with rejection from the publishers. He wrote dejectedly, "I don’t know which way to turn. I cannot decide what to write next. That which I desire to write does not seem to be what the editors want...I am full of stories and zeal and fire...yet I am inhibited by doubt, by fear that my feeling for life is false".
The birth of his first child restored his sense of urgency to produce his next novel and his first Western,
The Heritage of the Desert, which he completed in four months, and which became a bestseller. It propelled a career writing popular novels about
manifest destiny and the "conquest of the Wild West." Two years later he produced his best-known book,
Riders of the Purple Sage (1912). He formed his own
motion picture company, but in a few years sold it to
Jesse Lasky who was a partner of the founder of
Paramount Pictures. Paramount would make a number of movies based on Grey's writings.
It is also speculated that two of his creations,
Lone Star Ranger (a novel later turned into a 1930 film) and
King of the Royal Mounted (popular as a series of
big little books and comics, later turned into a 1936 film), were later used as an inspiration for two radio series by George Trendle (
WXYZ, Detroit) which later made the transition to television:
The Lone Ranger and
Challenge of the Yukon (
Sgt. Preston of the Yukon on TV). The
Zane Grey Show ran on the
Mutual Broadcasting System for five months in the late 1940s.
He became one of the first millionaire authors. Over the years his habit was to spend part of the year traveling and living an adventurous life and the rest of the year using his adventures as the basis for the stories in his writings. Some of that time was spent on the
Rogue River in
Oregon, where he maintained a cabin he had built on an old
mining claim he bought. He also had a cabin on the
Mogollon Rim in Arizona which burned down during the
Dude Fire of 1991.
He was the author of over 90 books, some published posthumously and/or based on
serials originally published in magazines. Many of them became bestsellers. One of them, “Tales of the Angler’s El Dorado, New Zealand” helped establish the
Bay of Islands in
New Zealand as a premier
game fishing area.
From 1918 until 1932 he was a regular contributor to
Outdoor Life magazine, becoming one of the publication's first celebrity writers. In the pages of the magazine he began to popularize big-game
fishing.
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