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The Overland Mail, 1849-1869
In the development of the American West, no two decades were so full of romance and change as the years from the California gold rush of 1849 to the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869. In two decades, the West was conquered and the secession movement rose and fell. From slow ox-team and prairie schooner to the dashing Pony Express, the overland mail service mirrored these monumental strides. Originally published in 1926, The Overland Mail was the first scholarly work to examine the impact of the postal service on the expansion of the West as the service evolved from a private endeavor to a government-contracted business. LeRoy R. Hafen details how the mail service tied West to East, influenced politics and economics, promoted use of the overland trails, aided in settlement, and helped usher in the railroads. This classic work is here available in paperback for the first time. In a new foreword, David Dary assesses Hafen’s contributions as a writer and historian.
Journals of Forty-niners
Western history is all the richer thanks to LeRoy and Ann Hafen, who have assembled a fascinating array of diaries and memoirs of forty-niners who set out from Salt Lake City toward California?s gold fields over the Old Spanish Trail. For many would-be gold miners, this dry, dangerous route was preferable to crossing the Sierra Nevada. The Donner party disaster was only three years old and fresh in the minds of many. In reality, the choice of the southern route did not ease travelers? efforts. The unremitting heat and lack of water killed more people and animals than the snows of the mountains. Jacob Stover?s narrative provides fine descriptions of these challenges, especially the difficulty in transporting supplies. Of added interest is the journal of Henry Bigler, a former member of the Mormon Battalion, who was the first person to record Marshall?s discovery of gold at Sutter?s Mill.
French Fur Traders and Voyageurs in the American West
?Frenchmen were far ahead of Englishmen in the early Far West, not only prior in time but greater in numbers and in historical importance,? writes Janet Lecompte in her introduction to French Fur Traders and Voyageurs in the American West. They were the first to navigate the Mississippi and its tributaries, and they founded St. Louis and New Orleans. Though France lost her North American possessions in 1763, thousands of her natives remained on the continent. Many of them were voyageurs for Hudson?s Bay Company, whose descendants would join American fur trade companies plying the trans-Mississippi West. ø This volume documents the fact that in the nineteenth century Frenchmen dominated the fur trade in the United States. Twenty-two biographies, collected from LeRoy R. Hafen?s classic ten-volume The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West, represent a variety of origins and social classes, types of work, and trading areas. Here are trappers who joined John Jacob Astor?s ill-fated fur venture on the Pacific, St. Louis traders who hauled goods to Spanish New Mexico along the Santa Fe Trail, and those who traded with Indians in the western plains and mountains.
Colorado
This is a thoroughly revised edition of the Historical Atlas of Colorado, which was coauthored by Tom Noel and published in 1994. Chock-full of the best and latest information on Colorado, this new edition features thirty new chapters, updated text, more than 100 color maps and 100 color photos, and a best-of listing of Colorado authors and books, as well as a guide to hundreds of tourist attractions. Colorado received its name (Spanish for “red”) after much debate and many possibilities, including Idaho (an “Indian” name meaning “gem of the mountains” later discovered to be a fabrication) and Yampa (Ute for “bear”). Noel includes other little-known but significant facts abou...
Old Spanish Trail
This classic history is filled with colorful pathmarkers like Jedediah Smith, John C. Främont, and Kit Carson; with packers, home seekers, and mail couriers; and with horse thieves and enslavers of Indian women and children.
Trappers of the Far West
In the early 1800s vast fortunes were made in the international fur trade, an enterprise founded upon the effort of a few hundred trappers scattered across the American West. From their ranks came men who still command respect for their daring, skill, and resourcefulness. This volume brings together brief biographies of seventeen leaders of the western fur trade, selected from essays assembled by LeRoy R. Hafen in The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West (ten volumes, 1965–72). The subjects and authors are: Etienne Provost (LeRoy R. Hafen); James Ohio Pattie (Ann W. Hafen); Louis Robidoux (David J. Weber); Ewing Young (Harvey L. Carter); David F. Jackson (Carl D. W Hays); Milton ...
Mountain Men and Fur Traders of the Far West
The legendary mountain men—the fur traders and trappers who penetrated the Rocky Mountains and explored the Far West in the first half on the nineteenth century—formed the vanguard of the American empire and became the heroes of American adventure. This volume brings to the general reader brief biographies of eighteen representative mountain men, selected from among the essay assembled by LeRoy R. Hafen in The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West (ten volumes, 1965-72). The subjects and authors are: Manuel Lisa (Richard E. Oglesby); Pierre Chouteau Jr. (Janet Lecompte); Wilson Price Hunt (William Brandon); William H. Ashley (Harvey L. Carter); Jedediah Smith (Harvey L. Carter); John McLoughlin (Kenneth L. Holmes); Peter Skene Ogden (Ted J. Warner); Ceran St. Vrain (Harold H. Dunham); Kit Carson (Harvey L. Carter); Old Bill Williams (Frederic E. Voelker); William Sublette (John E. Sunder);Thomas Fitzpatrick (LeRoy R. and Ann W. Hafen); James Bridger (Cornelius M. Ismert); Benjamin L. E. Bonneville (Edgeley W. Todd); Joseph R. Walker (Ardis M. Walker); Nathaniel Wyeth (William R. Sampson); Andrew Drips (Harvey L. Carter); and Joseph L. Meek (Harvey E. Tobie).
Broken Hand
Known by the Indians as "Broken Hand," Thomas Fitzpatrick was a trapper and a trailblazer who became the head of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. With Jedediah Smith he led the trapper band that discovered South Pass; he then shepherded the first two emigrant wagon trains to Oregon, was official guide to Fremont on his longest expedition, and guided Colonel Phil Kearny and his Dragoons along the westward trails to impress the Indians with howitzers and swords. Fitzpatrick negotiated the Fort Laramie treaty of 1851 at the largest council of Plains Indians ever assembled. Among the most colorful of mountain men, Fitzpatrick was also party to many of the most important events in the opening of the West.
Fur Traders, Trappers, and Mountain Men of the Upper Missouri
John Jacob Astor's dream of empire took shape as the American Fur Company. At Astor's retirement in 1834, this corporate monopoly reached westward from a depot on Mackinac Island to subposts beyond the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers. Fur Traders, Trappers, and Mountain Men of the Upper Missouri focuses on eighteen men who represented the American Fur Company and its successors in the Upper Missouri trade. Their biographies have been compiled from the classic ten-volume Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West, edited by LeRoy R. Hafen. These chapters bring back movers and shapers of a great venture: Ramsay Crooks, the mountain man who headed the American Fur Company ...
