John B. McClernan, Slade's Wells Fargo Colt (Historical Notes) This is a short, wonderful book. Ostensibly, it is about one...
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Following are brief reviews of some of the books I’ve read to date. Most of these have been reissued in paperback, but I’ve mostly ordered old hardbacks , which tend to run about the same price.
The Year of Decision
November 19, 2020
Bernard DeVoto, The Year of Decision: 1846 (1942) This book took a long time to read. It's very well written—I...
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A Route for the Overland Stage
November 17, 2020
Jesse G. Patterson, A Route for the Overland Stage: James H. Simpson's 1859 Trail Across the Great Basin (2008) This is...
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Ben Holladay, The Stagecoach King
July 26, 2020
J.V. Frederick, Ben Holladay, The Stagecoach King (1940) This book is something of a biography of Ben Holliday, who developed...
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Saddles and Spurs
July 20, 2020
Mary Lund Settle and Raymond W. Settle, Saddles and Spurs (1955) Saddles and Spurs is one of the seminal books...
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Prairie Schooner Detours
July 18, 2020
Irene D. Paden, Prairie Schooner Detours (1949) This is a follow up book to Paden's The Wake of the Prairie...
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The Wagonmasters
July 6, 2020
Henry Pickering Walker, The Wagonmasters (1966) This book is subtitled "High Plains Freighting from the Earliest Days of the Santa Fe...
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Guarding the Overland Trails: The Eleventh Ohio Cavalry in the Civil War
June 20, 2020
Robert Huhn Jones, Guarding the Overland Trails: The Eleventh Ohio Cavalry in the Civil War (2005) This book details the...
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The Mormon Conflict
June 19, 2020
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict: 1850–1859 (1960) I came across this book while reading Jess Unruh's The Plains Across....
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The Great Platte River Road
June 9, 2020
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road: The Covered Wagon Mainline via Fort Kearny to Fort Laramie (1960) From the...
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The Wake of the Prairie Schooner
May 26, 2020
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner (1944) For nine summers during the 1930s and early '40s, Paden...
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The California Trail
May 15, 2020
George R. Stewart, The California Trail (McGraw Hill, 1962) This book details the story of the California Trail from 1841...
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The Overland Mail: 1849-1869
May 14, 2020
LeRoy Hafen, The Overland Mail: 1849-1869 (Originally published 1926) Hafen's book, which grew out of his doctoral dissertation, is the...
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Wagon Roads West
May 9, 2020
W. Turentine Jackson, Wagon Roads West: A Study of Federal Surveys and Construction in the Trans-Mississippi West, 1846–1869 (University of...
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The Plains Across
May 8, 2020
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-60 (Univ. of Illinois, 1979) This...
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The Old Trails West
May 6, 2020
Ralph Moody, The Old Trails West (Promontory Press 1963) This book details the various trails used across the western U.S.,...
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Death of a Gunfighter
April 27, 2020
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter: The Quest for Jack Slade, the West's Most Elusive Legend (Westholme 2008) This book...
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South Pass: Gateway to a Continent
April 21, 2020
Will Bagley, South Pass: Gateway to a Continent (University of Oklahoma Press, 2015) So far, this is the only book...
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Historic Resource Study of the Pony Express National Historic Trail
April 17, 2020
Anthony Godfrey, Historic Resource Study of the Pony Express National Historic Trail (United States Department of the Interior/National Park Service...
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Empire on Wheels
April 13, 2020
Raymond W. Settle and Mary Lund Settle, Empire on Wheels (Stanford University Press 1949) Empire on Wheels, along with a couple...
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