Val Valentine

About the Author

A Coloradoan by choice, Val Valentine emigrated from the north shore of America near Lake Erie and its confluence with the Cuyahoga River in 1972 with an early appreciation of clean, clear water. He is a 1975 graduate of the University of Colorado, Boulder with a degree in Environmental Conservation (Biology, Geology and Geography). In the 1970s and ‘80s he backpacked most of the Colorado Trail and visited most of Colorado’s mining camps and ghost towns.

A student of World War II European Theatre history, Val wrote and produced a DVD, “Voie dela Liberte,” the account of his 2009 solo cycling tour of Normandie, following the guidon of his father’s (a Combat Medic,) WWII unit, the 24th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron (Mech.) from Utah Beach to Chartres, France.

Presently Val is writing “Through His Eyes,” a dual memoir of his father in World War II as a Combat Medic with the 24th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron and Val’s cycling journey, adventure following his father’s guidon. This book has many never before published photographs from 1944; scheduled for publication on Amazon-Kindle to coincide with the 70th Anniversary of D-Day. Volumes I & II are published. Volume III, Spring 2018.

From 1985 through 2007, Val served as a Colorado State Water Commissioner, serving three irrigation seasons on Saint Vrain Creek and twenty years in the upper San Juan River Basin.

Val enjoys writing western historical fiction. His published works include “Double Jack, A Search for a Dusty Jewel,” (2007) and “The Great Durango and Silverton Train Robbery,” a novella and screenplay, (1984, 2011). Nonfiction works include “A River Once More” (2010) and “Miner’s Mark, How Mining Claims Take Their Name.”