The story of the climax and decline of the Rocky Mountain fur trade during the 1830s.

The Fascinating History of the Rapid Expansion of Roads, Canals, and Railways in the First Decades of the United States While the great overland migration routes to America's far west are well known and documented--the California, Oregon, Mormon, and Santa Fe Trails, the Central Overland and Pony Express--less attention has been given to how Americans in the first decades of the republic traveled across the western frontiers of the original colonies. Following the revolution, Americans began to seek their fortunes to the west in greater numbers. Land grants to veterans inspired others to move, including tradesmen, merchants, and tavern owners. With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the country doubled in size, and the rate of migration became extraordinary, with wider and more durable roads built, ferries installed at river crossings, canals cut to move goods, regular stage routes established, and ultimately the first railroad tracks laid down. Entire regions that supported few communities in the 1790s exploded in population, and as a result seven new states were admitted to the Union in the decade following the War of 1812. John Bradbury, who traveled through the United States between 1809 and 1811, wrote that "In passing through the upper parts of Virginia, I observed a great number of farms that had been abandoned, on many of which good houses had been erected, and fine apple and peach orchards had been planted. On enquiring the reason, I was always informed that the owners had gone to the western country." In Maryland, a newspaper reporter wrote, "The time is close at hand when the region west of the Allegheny mountains will sway the destinies of the nation." By 1839, the National Road extended more than 700 miles from Washington, DC, to central Illinois, New York's Erie Canal operated from Albany to Buffalo, and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad carried passengers briskly west, ultimately to the Ohio River. To the Wide Missouri: Traveling in America During the First Decades of Westward Expansion by Louis Garavaglia covers the routes and methods that emigrants used to reach the west in the forty-year period following the Louisiana Purchase. Using contemporary maps and the graphic descriptions found in diaries, journals, letters, and newspaper accounts, the author details not only the land and water routes that led settlers to the western country, but also illustrates the hardship, perseverance, humor, and romance that colored their journey.

Twelve stories and blocks honor the courageous women who packed up their lives to head West. The featured quilt by Edie McGinnis and Jan Patek The Star's 2010 Block of the Month project is offered in two different colorways. Additional quick and easy projects also honor the pioneer spirit.

ICody Walsh leaves Arkansas for California. Lured by stories of opportunity, even for women, Cody disguises herself as a man and prepares for the arduous journey west. ILillie Ellis leaves New York to accept a post as a schoolteacher on the frontier near a small homestead she just inherited from her uncle. Lillie’s ultimate desire is to become a painter, and she hopes the Kansas frontier will offer her the freedom to follow that dream. In the nineteenth century, a young woman has few options in the East that don’t revolve around marriage and motherhood. Lillie is interested in neither. ICody rescues Lillie after a chance encounter in Independence, Missouri. Their destinies and desires become entwined as they face the perils of the untamed West. Despite their differences, they discover that love’s uncharted frontier is not for the weak in spirit or the faint of heart.

Traces the experiences of a Black family from just after the Civil War to the radical sixties.

This book tells the story of some people who went west in 1846. 1846 saw the outbreak of the war with Mexico, Fremont and the Bear Flag Revolt, a great Oregon and California emigration, the conquest of New Mexico, Doniphan's expedition, and the tragedy of the Donner party of emigrants--half adults, half childrens. These narratives are told as stories in themselves, as related parts of the great national spectacle, and as the culmination of the whole movement of American westward migration from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

The third volume of a monumental trilogy of the West by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Bernard De Vito is a dramatic story of three hundred years of exploration in North America. "A permanent contribution to history".--Kirkus Reviews.

In her diary, thirteen-year-old Hattie chronicles her family's arduous 1847 journey from Missouri to Oregon on the Oregon Trail.

A young man on the run from his past happens upon an old mountain man, and together they survive the Blackfeet and the Crow, bible-spouting pioneers, and sensuous women.