Seven Trails West: Discovering Community in 150 Years of Art - Hardcover

Peters, Arthur King

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1558597824 ISBN 13: 9781558597822

Publisher: Abbeville Press Inc.,U.S., 1996

Synopsis

This volume tells many stories in one: the epic tale of men and women (some of them famous trailbreakers, some little known); the lures that attracted these pragmatic dreamers to the West; and the ordeals and disappointments they overcame along the way. Illustrated with archival photographs, paintings, maps and documents, the book offers the general reader an overview of the western trail network that bound an immature nation together and provided an armature for later development.

About this title

From the Author:

http://www.mindspring.com/~seventrailswest/
For more information on my book, Seven Trails West, see my web site: http://www.mindspring.com/~seventrailswest/ Seven Trails West presents the saga of overland trails that grew like tendrils between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean from 1800 to 1870. I suspect I began composing this book fifty-one years ago that summer day when my wife and I first crossed Wyoming's Togwotee Pass, and we saw the plush, green valley of Jackson Hole, stretching away below us. This land was once French trapper and fur trader territory, opened up in the heyday of the beaver trade in the 1830s. Eventually, I would come to know the country on foot and horseback. Over time, I followed in the tracks of trapper Jim Bridger across Union Pass on his way to the fur brigades' rowdy annual Rendezvous; I re-traced the footsteps of Jedediah Smith, the missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, and the ill-starred Donner party over the Continental Divide at South Pass. I pursued the southwest route of William Becknell, the Bent brothers, Mary Donoho and Susan Magoffin over Raton Pass on the Santa Fe Trail in New Mexico. In Wyoming, I forded the Sweetwater, loped my horse, Lucky, down the Pony Express route, and swung along the Mormon Trail, nearly a century and a half after Brigham Young and his Saints wandered through that wilderness searching for their Promised Land. I warmed my hands on the sun-baked granite of Independence Rock, passed through Devil's Gate, and traveled the rails across plains and mountains where railroad men Charlie Crocker and Jack Casement frantically laid track in their race to Promontory Summit. Such encounters leave marks on the spirit as enduring as ancient incisions on a cliff face, and some no doubt show through in my book Seven Trails West.

From the Back Cover:

The first book of its kind, Seven Trails West explores the major routes that linked the eastern United States to the Far West: the trail blazed by the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the Santa Fe Trail, the Oregon-California Trail, the Mormon Trail, the Pony Express, the Transcontinental Telegraph, and the Transcontinental Railroad. Abundantly illustrated with a far-ranging selection of archival photographs, paintings, and documents, this handsome volume also features clear maps of each of the trails and striking color photographs of the challenging terrain traversed by the emigrants.

About this edition

• Publisher: Abbeville Press Inc.,U.S.
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1558597824
• ISBN 13: 9781558597822
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 252