Lu Teaford: Queen of the mountains

For The Madera Tribune

Lu Bowman and Otis Teaford are shown here on the day of their wedding in 1914. The husband and wife team was inseparable, even while hunting big game on horseback in the high country. Otis Teaford was the son of George Teaford, an early Madera County supervisor.

---

I will never forget that day in 1992, when Bill and Doris Seabury took me to North Fork to meet Lu Bowman Teaford. It was 78 years after she had become the bride of Otis Teaford, Madera County’s king of the mountains, and did she ever have a story to tell!

“I would have done anything in the world just to be with my husband; I didn’t care if he was at the top of the moon,” Lu told me.

A woman of less resolve might have given up; it took courage to face wild-eyed bulls, charging bears, and hungry mountain lions, but Lu never lost sight of who she was and with whom she traveled, and I never lost sight of the fact that I was talking with a true pioneer.