The western fur trade era—a time when trappers and traders endured constant danger from man, beast, and weather—was one of the most colorful periods in American history. Over a decade ago, William R. Nester wrote the first biography of Robert Campbell (1804–1879); the subsequent discovery of nearly five hundred new documents, most from two major caches of letters, led to this even-more-detailed and vivid account of Campbell’s self-described “bold and dashing life.” Campbell came to America from Ireland in 1822 and entered the fur trade soon after. He quickly rose from trapper to brigade leader to partner, all within a half dozen years, and this new edition includes an expanded narrative of his adventures in the Rocky Mountain fur trade. In the mid-1830s, having amassed considerable wealth, Campbell retired from the mountains and embarked on a new career. He returned to St. Louis and built up a business empire that embraced mercantile, steamboat, railroad, and banking interests, thus becoming a leading force behind the region’s economic development. A more extensive account of the cutthroat business world in which Campbell operated now enriches this portion of the book. Nester masterfully depicts the “sterling character” for which Campbell was renowned. Campbell enjoyed deep and enduring friendships and strong familial ties, both in America and abroad. Although he was an outstanding businessman and philanthropist, his personal life was marred by tragedy. Ten of his thirteen children died prematurely. Despite those tragic losses, his faith in God never faltered. He believed that all worldly successes should honor God and once wrote that , “all worldly gain is but dross.” This edition elucidates the complex relations among his family and chronicles both tragic events and humorous incidents in more depth. Exploring the letters, journals, and account books that Campbell left behind, Nester places him in the context of the times in which he lived, showing the economic, political, social, and cultural forces that provided the opportunities and challenges that shaped his life. Nester provides new insights into Campbell’s ownership of slaves, his attitudes toward slavery, and his behind-the-scenes political and economic activities during the Civil War. This comprehensive exploration of Robert Campbell’s life depicts a fascinating era in American history.

A reputation as the town of shoes, booze and blues persists in St. Louis. But a fascinating history waits just beneath the surface in the heart of the city, like the labyrinth of natural limestone caves where Anheuser-Busch got its start. One of the city's Garment District shoe factories was the workplace of a young Tennessee Williams, referenced in his first Broadway play, The Glass Menagerie. Downtown's vibrant African American community was the source and subject of such folk-blues classics as "Frankie and Johnny" and "Stagger Lee," not to mention W.C. Handy's classic "St. Louis Blues." Navigate this hidden heritage of downtown St. Louis with author Maureen Kavanaugh.

Explores period frontier life and contradictory accounts in an effort to discern the true story of a 19th-century bear-mauling victim who pursued vengeance against the companions who left him for dead.

The American West of the nineteenth century was a world of freedom and adventure for men of every stripe—not least also those who admired and desired other men. Among these sojourners was William Drummond Stewart, a flamboyant Scottish nobleman who found in American culture of the 1830s and 1840s a cultural milieu of openness in which men could pursue same-sex relationships. This book traces Stewart’s travels from his arrival in America in 1832 to his return to Murthly Castle in Perthshire, Scotland, with his French Canadian–Cree Indian companion, Antoine Clement, one of the most skilled hunters in the Rockies. Benemann chronicles Stewart’s friendships with such notables as Kit Carson, William Sublette, Marcus Whitman, and Jim Bridger. He describes the wild Renaissance-costume party held by Stewart and Clement upon their return to America—a journey that ended in scandal. Through Stewart’s letters and novels, Benemann shows that Stewart was one of many men drawn to the sexual freedom offered by the West. His book provides a tantalizing new perspective on the Rocky Mountain fur trade and the role of homosexuality in shaping the American West.

Criminals draw the wrath of a retired gunfighter after shooting his wife in this western by a USA Today–bestselling author of War of the Mountain Man. Lee Slater and his gang of lowlife desperadoes didn’t know that Smoke Jensen had given up his gunslinger status to become a family man. Stirring up a motherlode of trouble was their first mistake. Shooting Smoke’s wife Sally was their second. Chances are, they’re not going to live to make a third.

Contains two Smoke Jensen novels, including "Pride of the Mountain man," where Smoke and Wyatt Earp go up against a gang in Dodge City, and "Code of the Mountain Man," where Smoke tracks down the gang that shot and injured his wife.

Assembled in honor of the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of philanthropist and entrepreneur Henry Shaw (1800-1889), St. Louis in the Century of Henry Shaw is a collection of nine provocative essays that together provide a definitive account of the life of St. Louis during the 1800s, a thriving period during which the city acquired the status of the largest metropolis in the American West. Shaw, who established the Missouri Botanical Garden in 1859, was just one of the many immigrants who left their mark on this complex, culturally rich city during the century of its greatest growth. This volume examines the lives of a number of these men and women, from celebrated leaders such as Senator Thomas Hart Benton and the Reverend William Greenleaf Eliot to the thousands of Germans, African Americans, and others whose labor built the city we recognize today. Leading scholars reconstruct and interpret the world that Shaw knew in his long lifetime: a world of contention and of creativity, of trendsetting developments in politics, business, scientific research, and the arts. Shaw's own story mirrored these developments. Born in Sheffield, England, he immigrated to the United States in 1819 and soon moved to St. Louis. Ultimately becoming a very successful businessman and philanthropist, he was a participant in and a witness to the vast economic and cultural transformation of the city.

Even among iconic frontiersmen like John C. Frémont, Kit Carson, and Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger stands out. A mountain man of the American West, straddling the fur trade era and the age of exploration, he lived the life legends are made of. His adventures are fit for remaking into the tall tales Bridger himself liked to tell. Here, in a biography that finally gives this outsize character his due, Jerry Enzler takes this frontiersman’s full measure for the first time—and tells a story that would do Jim Bridger proud. Born in 1804 and orphaned at thirteen, Bridger made his first western foray in 1822, traveling up the Missouri River with Mike Fink and a hundred enterprising young men to trap beaver. At twenty he “discovered” the Great Salt Lake. At twenty-one he was the first to paddle the Bighorn River’s Bad Pass. At twenty-two he explored the wonders of Yellowstone. In the following years, he led trapping brigades into Blackfeet territory; guided expeditions of Smithsonian scientists, topographical engineers, and army leaders; and, though he could neither read nor write, mapped the tribal boundaries for the Great Indian Treaty of 1851. Enzler charts Bridger’s path from the fort he built on the Oregon Trail to the route he blazed for Montana gold miners to avert war with Red Cloud and his Lakota coalition. Along the way he married into the Flathead, Ute, and Shoshone tribes and produced seven children. Tapping sources uncovered in the six decades since the last documented Bridger biography, Enzler’s book fully conveys the drama and details of the larger-than-life history of the “King of the Mountain Men.” This is the definitive story of an extraordinary life.