Montezuma Castle National Monument

ROD TIMANUS was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, raised in Cutler Ridge, Florida and currently resides in Glendale, Arizona. He served in the U.S. Army Infantry in Viet Nam and Germany from 1968 to 1971 as a Grenadier, an Operations Sergeant and Mechanized Infantry Squad Leader. He holds an Associate's degree in Commercial Art from Middlesex Community College in Middletown, Connecticut, a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Graphic Design from Paier College of Art in Hamden, Connecticut and a Certificate in Illustration from the Comic Art Workshop. His artwork, maps and diagrams have appeared in several books, including Eyewitness to the Alamo, Battlefields of Texas and Death of a Legend by Bill Groneman (Republic of Texas Press) and The Alamo Story by J.R. Edmondson (Republic of Texas Press). His work has also appeared in The Alamo Almanac and Book of Lists and The Davy Crockett Almanac and Book of Lists by William R. Chemerka (Eakin Press). He has contributed cover art, illustrations, and written articles for The Alamo Journal, official publication of The Alamo Society. From that career he began to write and illustrate his own books about the Old West. Rod retraced the last journeys of David Crockett, from Rutherford, Tennessee to the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas and Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer from Fort Lincoln, North Dakota to the Little Bighorn valley in Montana. On the Crockett Trail (Pioneer Press) is a history/travel book released in November of 1999, On the Custer Trail (Pioneer Press) was released in 2001, in time to coincide with the 125th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Also in 2001, An Illustrated History of Texas Forts (Republic of Texas Press) was released. Additionally, On the Lewis and Clark Trail (Pioneer Press), a retracing of the 1804-1806 expedition through the Louisiana Territory, was released in January 2003. He wrote and illustrated The Alamo entry for the 4-volume encyclopedia Americans at War (Macmillan Publishing) released in 2005 and, until his move to Arizona, wrote and illustrated monthly history articles for The Middletown Press newspaper in Middletown, Connecticut. After relocating to Arizona he contributed sixteen entries to the two-volume The Settlement of America: Encyclopedia of Westward Expansion (M.E. Sharpe) released in 2011 and had articles appear in The Wild West Gazette, The Tombstone Times, and The Arizona Republic newspapers. Additionally, he wrote the article I am Doc Holliday for The American Cowboy magazine online edition. In 2014, Creating Texas a Brief History of the Revolution (Lauric Publishing), coauthored by the late Jeffrey Dane (1943-2015), was published, and named the winner of the 2014 Elmer Kelton Nonfiction Book Award presented by the Academy of Western Artists. The same year, Montezuma Castle National Monument (Arcadia Publishing) was released. He wrote the text for Kazu, a book of fine art photography by the late Kazu Okutomi (1939-2016), in 2015. In 2017, Tuzigoot National Monument (Arcadia Publishing) was released as a companion volume to the Montezuma Castle book. He designed the covers for all but three of his Western History books, the exceptions being for Republic of Texas Press and Arcadia Publishing, plus the covers for And .... Action! by Stephen Lodge (Mirage Books) and Apache Tears by Stoney Livingston (Chokonen Press). In 2021, he completed writing and illustrating his first Western fiction novel, The Penitent Gun. He is a member of The Western Writers of America and The Arizona Historical Society.