Caroline Lockhart was born in Eagle Point, Illinois on February 24, 1871. She grew up on a ranch in Kansas. She attended Bethany College in Topeka, Kansas and the Moravian Seminary in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. A failed actress, she became a reporter for The Boston Post and later for the Philadelphia Bulletin. She also started writing short stories. In 1904, she moved to Cody, Wyoming to write a feature article about the Blackfoot Indians, and settled there. She started writing novels and her second novel, The Lady Doc, was based on life in Cody. In 1918-1919, she lived in Denver, Colorado and worked as a reporter for The Denver Post. In 1919, her novel The Fighting Shepherdess, loosely based on the life of sheepherder Lucy Morrison Moore, was made into a 1920 movie starring Anita Stewart, with uncredited script adaptation by Lenore J. Coffee.