Join the adventure, romance and tragedy of families in the late 1830s and early 1840s. Many couples married very young; but the life expectancy was around 40 years of age. Couples often stayed close to family, even living on the same land. Each couple in this story has different reasons to move west, but they join their lives as they join trails. Two young couples are soon joined by a third, newlywed couple on the wagon train. The Iowa Territory was known for fertile grass lands for farming and tracks of forest for lumber. What could not be expressed was the varied beauty of the Iowa landscape. Matthew and Zeta Emmerson, Ruben and Amy Younst and Jack and Cassandra Draper join together on the same wagon train and develop friendships. They meet and befriend John Fetters, Old John, on the trail after the tragic loss of his wife, Fran. Join them on their adventure.
A groundbreaking history of how the US Post made the nineteenth-century American West. There were five times as many post offices in the United States in 1899 than there are McDonald's restaurants today. During an era of supposedly limited federal government, the United States operated the most expansive national postal system in the world. In this cutting-edge interpretation of the late nineteenth-century United States, Cameron Blevins argues that the US Post wove together two of the era's defining projects: western expansion and the growth of state power. Between the 1860s and the early 1900s, the western United States underwent a truly dramatic reorganization of people, land, capital, and resources. It had taken Anglo-Americans the better part of two hundred years to occupy the eastern half of the continent, yet they occupied the West within a single generation. As millions of settlers moved into the region, they relied on letters and newspapers, magazines and pamphlets, petitions and money orders to stay connected to the wider world. Paper Trails maps the spread of the US Post using a dataset of more than 100,000 post offices, revealing a new picture of the federal government in the West. The western postal network bore little resemblance to the civil service bureaucracies typically associated with government institutions. Instead, the US Post grafted public mail service onto private businesses, contracting with stagecoach companies to carry the mail and paying local merchants to distribute letters from their stores. These arrangements allowed the US Post to rapidly spin out a vast and ephemeral web of postal infrastructure to thousands of distant places. The postal network's sprawling geography and localized operations forces a reconsideration of the American state, its history, and the ways in which it exercised power.
If, as Wallace Stegner said, the national park is “the best idea we ever had,” the rail-trail is certainly a close runner-up. Part transportation corridor, part park, the rail-trail has revolutionized the way America creates high-quality, car-free pathways for bicyclists, runners, walkers, equestrians, and more. It was only a few decades after railroad barons had run roughshod over America’s economy and politics that they began to shed nearly one hundred thousand miles of unneeded railroad corridor. At the same time, bicyclists were being so thoroughly pushed off ever-more-intimidating roadways they came close to extinction. Through political organizing and lawyerly grit, an unlikely, formerly marginalized advocacy arose, seized on seemingly worthless strips of land, and created a resource that is treasured by millions of Americans today for recreation, purposeful travel, tourism, conservation, and historical interpretation. From Rails to Trails is the fascinating tale of the rails-to-trails movement as well as a consideration of what the continued creation of rail-trails means for the future of Americans’ health, nonmotorized transportation networks, and communities across the country.
In this history of new media technologies, leading media and cultural theorists examine new media against the background of traditional media such as film, photography, and print in order to evaluate the multiple claims made about the benefits and freedom of digital media.
Now in its 9th edition, the completely updated and revised Sierra North showcases new trips and old favorites in regions such as Desolation Wilderness, Emigrant Wilderness, the proposed Castle Peak Wilderness, and the world-famous Yosemite National Park.
NOTE: NO FURTHER DISCOUNT FOR THIS PRINT PRODUCT--OVERSTOCK SALE -- Significantly reduced list price while supplies last Documents the history and significance of the trail system on Mount Desert Island, Maine. Many of Acadia National Park's foot trails preceded the establishment of the park. The earliest pathmakers were Abenakis, who made trails for carrying canoes between lakes and for other practical reasons. European settlers later developed recreation trails. Summer visitors organized Village Improvement Associations and Village Improvement Societies, whose path committee volunteers created trails that were incorporated, in 1916, into the new Sieur de Monts National Monument, precursor to Lafayette National Park (1919). Ten years later, the protected area was renamed Acadia National Park. It was the first national park to have sprung full-blown from philanthropy. Volunteers and park crews, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s and early 1940s, expanded and maintained the trail system. Friends of Acadia was formed in 1986 to extend the philanthropic vision of the park founders. The organization later mounted Acadia Trails Forever, which matched $4 million in park entry fees with $9 million in private donations, to rehabilitate the footpaths over ten years. The model project made Acadia the first national park with an endowed trail system. Each era of trail building and its individual pathmakers utilized different construction styles, standards and aesthetic nuances. The job of today's professional trail crew and its legion of volunteers is to honor the pathmakers of old by replicating their construction signatures whenever possible. National parks, after all, are repositories of history and culture, and the Park Service's legal duty of care is to preserve these magnificent places "unimpaired for the use and enjoyment of future generations." Three important books guide Acadia's trail crews in that obligation: Preserving Historic Trails, the proceedings from an October 2000 conference of trail building experts from across the nation; this volume, Pathmakers: Cultural Landscape Report for the Historic Hiking Trail System of Acadia National Park (2005), a profusely illustrated history of trail building; and the second volume of the cultural landscape report, Acadia Trails Treatment Plan (2005), which lays out precise construction and maintenance techniques favoring the historically faithful preservation of Acadia's footpaths. These authoritative resources, and the park's Hiking Trails Management Plan, were compiled with input from one of the best kept secrets in the National Park Service, the Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation, a coterie of landscape architects, historians and writers tucked away in Brookline, Massachusetts. The Olmsted staff collaborated over several years with Acadia's trail crew, one of the best in the 388-unit National Park System. Each year, the Acadia Trails Forever project brings more trails up to the rehabilitation standards set forth in the cultural landscape report. Previously neglected features such as iron work, granite steps, bog bridges, log stringers, water bars, rock drains. Bates-style cairns and other historic features are carefully redone or added, complementing Acadia's natural splendor. Audience Environmentalists, Historians, Educators, and Students would find it interesting to learn about the history of Acadia National Park and the people that work to preserve it. Other related products: Acadia Trails Treatment Plan: Cultural Landscape Report for the Historic Hiking Trail System of Acadia National Park can be found here:https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/024-003-00196-1 Designing Sustainable Off-Highway Vehicle Trails : An Alaska Trail Manager\'s Perspective can be found here:https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/001-001-00701-3 National Trails System: Map and Guide, 2010 Edition (Package of 100) can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/024-005-01277-0 Other products produced by the U.S. National Park Service can be found here:https://bookstore.gpo.gov/agency/222
“What is ‘the American idea’? It is the fractious, maddening approach to the conduct of human affairs that values equality despite its elusiveness, that values democracy despite its debasement, that values pluralism despite its messiness, that values the institutions of civic culture despite their flaws, and that values public life as something higher and greater than the sum of all our private lives. The founders of the magazine valued these things—and they valued the immense amount of effort it takes to preserve them from generation to generation.” --The Editors of The Atlantic Monthly, 2006 This landmark collection of writings by the illustrious contributors of The Atlantic Monthly is a one-of-a-kind education in the history of American ideas. The Atlantic Monthly was founded in 1857 by a remarkable group that included some of the towering figures of nineteenth-century intellectual life: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell.For 150 years, the magazine has continued to honor its distinguished pedigree by publishing many of America’s most prominent political commentators, journalists, historians, humorists, storytellers, and poets. Throughout the magazine’s history, Atlantic contributors have unflinchingly confronted the fundamental subjects of the American experience: war and peace, science and religion, the conundrum of race, the role of women, the plight of the cities, the struggle to preserve the environment, the strengths and failings of our politics, and, especially, America’s proper place in the world. This extraordinary anthology brings together many of the magazine’s most acclaimed and influential articles. “Broken Windows,” by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, took on the problem of inner-city crime and gave birth to a new way of thinking about law enforcement. “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” by Bernard Lewis, prophetically warned of the dangers posed to the West by rising Islamic extremism. “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” by Martin Luther King, Jr., became one of the twentieth century’s most famous reflections upon—and calls for—racial equality. And “The Fifty-first State,” by James Fallows, previewed in astonishing detailthe mess in which America would find itself in Iraqa full six months before the invasion.The collection also highlights some of The Atlantic’s finest moments in fiction and poetry—from the likes of Twain, Whitman, Frost, Hemingway, Nabokov, and Bellow—affirming the central role of literature in defining and challenging American society. Rarely has an anthology so vividly captured America. Serious and comic, touching and tough, The American Idea paints a fascinating portrait of who we are, where we have come from, and where we are going.
Published by the Boy Scouts of America for all BSA registered adult volunteers and professionals, Scouting magazine offers editorial content that is a mixture of information, instruction, and inspiration, designed to strengthen readers' abilities to better perform their leadership roles in Scouting and also to assist them as parents in strengthening families.
