Emma Marble Muir (1873–1959) arrived at the mining town of Shakespeare in 1882, and she and her daughter, Rita Wells Muir, learned to appreciate and preserve the town's history. Rita and her husband bought Shakespeare as part of their ranch in 1935, and Rita later passed the ranch to her daughter, Janaloo Hill Hough. Janaloo and her husband continued fighting for Shakespeare's history and preservation, investing their own resources to rebuild some of the buildings destroyed by a fire in 1997. Without the dedication of this mother, daughter, and granddaughter, the ghost town of Shakespeare would not exist today.