Coronado on the Plains
Under the burning-glass July sun they went on across the green, rolling land-ocean under the unbounded sky, past the Great Bend of the Arkansas, left the river, traveled northeast till…
Scott’s Bluff
Miller's paintings of Scott's Bluff and Chimney Rock are reproduced in our plates. The convention of Western books requires me to remind the reader that the former were named for…
Mountain Neurosis
Like Narcissa and Eliza the women were casting the lines that emigrant wives were to follow - botanizing, collecting curious pebbles, gaping at the scenery, putting on their nightgowns and…
Clothing of Four Bears
But actually Four Bears [Mandan chief] had more iron in him than that. When he felt the fever come upon him he dressed in his most ceremonious garments. (Shirt of…
South Pass 1836
the last tangential touch of the Sweetwater, in the greenery of its shallow gully where it comes down out of the hills, and we know that it camped for the…
Summer in the Higher Places
About the middle of July there comes into the air of the high places a golden emptiness, a washed look infinitely beautiful but melancholy with a premonition of fall. The early light…
Hunting Buffalo
Stewart may have had many motives for coming to the United States, but probably foremost among them was a desire to experience what seems to have been the finest of all sports…
Platte River
Campbell's party reached the Platte well to the east of the forks, took the South Platte at the forks, and presently crossed to the North Platte. For a hundred miles the country…
The Prairie in Spring
They were on the route which Ashley's men had established and along which the United States was to follow its western star. (Oregon began at the Continental Divide, that is, halfway through Wyoming,…
The Posing of Contrary Biased Opinions
For the posing of contrary biased opinions does not necessarily result in truth, not does the citing of a charge with its counter-charge, or a pious delusion with the facts…
Loss of Romance of the Trail
And partly what Burton saw along the trail reflected the change that had come in the trail itself. By 1860 much of the romance had gone out of an overland crossing, along…
Last 36 Miles to Salt Lake
By the testimony of every diarist, the thirty-six last miles, from the Weber to the Salt Lake Valley, were worse than anything on the whole road. It was as if…
Green River Basin to the Mormons
Two days into the land of promise, they saw little that was promising. Pilot Butte and then Church Butte, well-known landmarks were on their left, to the southeast. Far to…
Little Blue Valley
“For years Marysville, Kansas, marked the end of the truly settled country; but the Little Blue Valley, so, charming and so fertile, sheltered a sort of border zone of ranches…
The Big Blue
“Except under abnormal conditions the camp site under these old trees [by the Big Blue] was an oasis, comfortable and even luxurious with fresh-water clams from the river, berries from…