South Pass, 1868
South Pass, 1868

Author: James Chisholm

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 1975-01-01

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780803258242

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"James Chisholm was a staff writer For The Chicago Tribune sent to report on the gold strike made in the late 1860s at one of the great historical features of the continent?South Pass on the western trails. His journal, illustrated by himself, Is a graceful, observant narrative full of the real essence of frontier mining camp life."?Library Journal. "Chisholm had a lively sense of humor, An engaging frankness, and a fine eye for landscape. He was also a candid social critic."?Rocky Mountain News. "Lovers of the Old West will buy Chisholm's Journal and never part with it."?Pacific Historical Review. "If South Pass failed to produce gold in the paying quantities James Chisholm's miners thought it would, Chisholm himself produced finer, more lasting gold in his journal account of Wyoming's short-lived gold rush. His journal exudes the smell of sagebrush and scenic panoramas, Of torrential rain storms and night packing, Of being small in a big land, and of honest, earthy people who, In business-like fashion, went about the task of risking life, limb, health, and what small fortunes they had, To hit the big one. Chisholm sees with unpretentious eyes. His is an honest appraisal from a detached journalist, leavened with self-effacing humor. His prose is clean and clear. it can be read aloud and remembered."?Charles E. Rankin, editor of Montana the Magazine of Western History. Lola M. Homsher was director of the Wyoming State Archives and Historical Department.

Gunsmoke and Saddle Leather
Gunsmoke and Saddle Leather

Author: Charles G. Worman

Publisher: UNM Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 544

ISBN-13: 9780826335937

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The many roles played by guns in the old West with personal accounts by many early settlers and hundreds of photos.

South Pass
South Pass

Author: Will Bagley

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2014-05

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0806145110

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Wallace Stegner called South Pass “one of the most deceptive and impressive places in the West.” Nowhere can travelers cross the Rockies so easily as through this high, treeless valley in Wyoming immediately south of the Wind River Mountains. South Pass has received much attention in lore and memory but attracted no serious book-length study—until now. In this narrative, award-winning author Will Bagley explains the significance of South Pass to the nation’s history and to the development of the American West. Fur traders first saw South Pass in 1812. From the early 1840s until the completion of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads almost forty years later, emigrants on the Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails used South Pass in transforming the American West in a single generation. Bagley traces the peopling of the region by the earliest inhabitants and adventurers, including Indian peoples, trappers and fur traders, missionaries, and government-commissioned explorers. Later, California gold rushers, Latter-day Saints, and families seeking new lives went through this singular gap in the Rockies. Without South Pass, overland wagons beginning their journey far to the east along the Missouri River could not have reached their destinations in a single season, and western settlement might have been delayed for decades. The story of South Pass offers a rich history. The Overland Stage, Pony Express, and first transcontinental telegraph all came through the region. Nearly a century later, President Dwight D. Eisenhower designated South Pass as one of America’s first National Historic Landmarks. An American place so rich in historical significance, Bagley argues, deserves the best of historical preservation efforts.

Hell on Wheels
Hell on Wheels

Author: Dick Kreck

Publisher: Fulcrum Publishing

Published: 2016-03-23

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 1555919529

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Overnight settlements, better known as "Hell on Wheels," sprang up as the transcontinental railroad crossed Nebraska and Wyoming. They brought opportunity not only for legitimate business but also for gamblers, land speculators, prostitutes, and thugs. Dick Kreck tells their stories along with the heroic individuals who managed, finally, to create permanent towns in the interior West.

Six-Guns and Saddle Leather
Six-Guns and Saddle Leather

Author: Ramon Frederick Adams

Publisher: Courier Corporation

Published: 1998-02-25

Total Pages: 848

ISBN-13: 9780486400358

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Authoritative guide to everything in print about lawmen and the lawless—from Billy the Kid to the painted ladies of frontier cow towns. Nearly 2,500 entries, taken from newspapers, court records, and more.

The Great Medicine Road, Part 4
The Great Medicine Road, Part 4

Author: Michael L. Tate

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2020-05-07

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0806166991

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Between 1841 and 1866, more than a half-million people followed trails to Oregon, California, and Utah in one of the largest mass migrations in American history. The Great Medicine Road, Part 4 collects the letters, diaries, and reminiscences of some of the emigrants who made this journey between 1856 and 1869, as a second generation of miners, farmers, town builders, and religious believers turned their adventurous eyes westward in search of new beginnings. Here, in their own words, are the experiences of young men hoping to make their fortunes in mining operations that had sprung up as the gold rush wore down, in California but also now in the silver mines of Nevada’s Comstock Lode and the recently discovered gold mines of Colorado’s Denver and Pike’s Peak regions. Here also are families and farmers looking for land in the fertile Willamette Valley of Oregon, or joining the Mormon community in Utah. And here are the stories of intrepid sojourners traveling with—or without—military escorts as the Civil War, conflicts with Indians, and the Mormon stand against the U.S. government altered the circumstances of westward traffic. These documents, with an introduction and editorial notes written by historian Michael L. Tate to provide context and commentary, comprise the fourth and final installment in a documentary history of the Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails. They give a living voice to the history of the American experience at a time of westward expansion and profound, unprecedented change.

Tales of the Frontier
Tales of the Frontier

Author:

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 1971-06-01

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9780803257443

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"Anyone in search of the spirit of the Old West will find it in this book. In fact, any student in college taking a course in the history of the West or even in a general history of the United States should be required to read Dick's book; and when once the student had sniffed its atmosphere, the required would no longer be necessary."--Georgia Historical Quarterly "An entertaining and comprehensive collection. . . . The reader is sure to put Dick's book down with a fresh realization of the vigor, adventure, humor, tragedy, and endeavor that went into the development of our western country."--Annals of Wyoming "A highly satisfactory and completely disarming approach to the history of the West."-- Utah Historical Quarterly "A delightful anthology of western Americana by that great collector of social history, Professor Everett Dick."--Social Education "A great book for those who enjoy the history of how our West was won"--The Western Horseman

Daily Life on the Nineteenth Century American Frontier
Daily Life on the Nineteenth Century American Frontier

Author: Mary Ellen Jones

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 1998-11-24

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 1573566640

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The nineteenth century American frontier comes alive for students and interested readers in this unique exploration of westward expansion. This study examines the daily lives of ordinary men and women who flooded into the Trans-Mississippi West in search of land, fortune, a fresh start, and a new identity. Their daily life was rarely easy. If they were to survive, they had to adapt to the land and modify every aspect of their lives, from housing to transportation, from education to defense, from food gathering and preparation to the establishment of rudimentary laws and social structures. They also had to adapt to the Native Americans already on the land—whether through acculturation, warfare, or coexistence. Jones provides insight into the experiences that affected the daily lives of the diverse people who inhabited the American frontier: the Native Americans, trappers, explorers, ranchers, homesteaders, soldiers and townspeople. This fascinating book gives a sense of the extraordinary ordinariness of surviving, prospering, failing, and dying in a new land; and explores how these westering Americans inevitably displaced those already bound to the land by tradition, culture, and religion. A wealth of illustrations complement the text of this easy-to use reference.

Violent Land
Violent Land

Author: David T. Courtwright

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-01

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9780674029897

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This book offers an explosive look at violence in America--why it is so prevalent, and what and who are responsible. David Courtwright takes the long view of his subject, developing the historical pattern of violence and disorder in this country. Where there is violent and disorderly behavior, he shows, there are plenty of men, largely young and single. What began in the mining camp and bunkhouse has simply continued in the urban world of today, where many young, armed, intoxicated, honor-conscious bachelors have reverted to frontier conditions. Violent Land combines social science with an engrossing narrative that spans and reinterprets the history of violence and social disorder in America. Courtwright focuses on the origins, consequences, and eventual decline of frontier brutality. Though these rough days have passed, he points out that the frontier experience still looms large in our national self-image--and continues to influence the extent and type of violence in America as well as our collective response to it. Broadly interdisciplinary, looking at the interplay of biological, social, and historical forces behind the dark side of American life, this book offers a disturbing diagnosis of violence in our society.

Calamity Jane
Calamity Jane

Author: Richard W. Etulain

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2015-08-25

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 080615263X

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This exhaustive bibliographical reference will be the first stop for anyone looking for Calamity Jane in print, film, or photograph—and wanting to know how reliable those sources may be. Richard W. Etulain, renowned western-U.S. historian and the author of a recent biography of this charismatic figure, enumerates and assesses the most valuable sources on Calamity Jane’s life and legend in newspapers, magazines, journals, books, and movies, as well as historical and government archives. Etulain begins with a brief biography of Martha Canary, aka Calamity Jane (1856–1903), then analyzes the origins and growth of her legends. The sources, Etulain shows, reveal three versions of Calamity Jane. In the most popular one, she was a Wild Woman of the Old West who helped push a roaring frontier through its final stages. This is the Calamity Jane who fought Indians, marched with the military, and took on the bad guys. Early in her life she also hoped to embody the pioneer woman, seeking marriage and a stable family and home. A third, later version made of Calamity an angel of mercy who reached out to the poor and nursed smallpox victims no one else would help. The hyperbolic journalism of the Old West, as well as dime novels and the stretchers Calamity herself told in her interviews and autobiography, shaped her legends through much of the twentieth century. Many of the sensational early accounts of Calamity’s life, Etulain notes, were based on rumor and hearsay. In illuminating the role of the Deadwood Dick dime novel series and other pulp fiction in shaping what we know—or think we know—of the American West, Etulain underscores one of his fascinating themes: the power of popular culture. The product of twenty years’ labor sifting fact from falsehood or distortion, this bibliography and reader’s guide includes brief discussions of nearly every item’s contents, along with a terse, entertaining evaluation of its reliability.