Greetings from Fairbanks! This is the last you shall hear from me, Wayne. Arrived here 2 days ago. It was very difficult to catch rides in the Yukon Territory. But I finally got here. Please return all mail I receive to the sender. It might be a very long time before I return South. If this adventure proves fatal and you don't ever hear from me again I want you to know you're a great man. I now walk into the wild. --Alex. (Postcard received by Wayne...

In 1804, John Colter set out with Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on the first U.S. expedition to traverse the North American continent. During the twenty-eight month ordeal, Colter served as a hunter and scout, and honed his survival skills on the western frontier. But when the journey was over, Colter stayed behind, spending four more years trekking alone through dangerous and unfamiliar territory. Along the way, he charted some of the West's...

"Thomas Jefferson's Corps of Discovery included Captains Lewis and Clark and a crew of 28 men to chart a route from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean. All the crew but one volunteered for the mission. York, the enslaved man taken on the journey, did not choose to go. Slaves did not have choices. York's contributions to the expedition, however, were invaluable. The captains came to rely on York's judgement, determination, and peacemaking role with the...

Describes the lives of the beaver trappers who were the first explorers of the American West beyond the Rocky mountains, and some of the tall tales that made them legends.

Between 1803 and 1806, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark co-captained the most famous expedition in American history. But, while Lewis ended his life just three years later, Clark, as the highest-ranking Federal official in the West, spent three decades overseeing its consequences: Indian removal and the destruction of Native America. In a rare combination of storytelling and scholarship, best-selling author Landon Y. Jones presents for the first...

Traces the lives of Lewis and Clark from their youth to their successful return from exploring the American West.

An introduction to the lives of Lewis and Clark and to the exploratory expedition they led from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean in the early nineteenth century.

Details the mountain men legends popular in the West from the early 1800s through 1840 that described the terrain's inhabitants as extremely skilled horsemen, trappers, and marksmen with an intimate knowledge of nature.

A biography of the army officer and explorer who discovered, among other places in the West and Southwest, the great Rocky Mountain peak in Colorado that bears his name.

John C. Fremont, nearly forgotten today, was one of the giants of nineteenth-century America. He led five expeditions into the American West in the 1840s and 1850s, covering a greater area than any other explorer. His expedition reports--ghost-written by his beautiful and talented wife, Jessie Benton Fremont-- were bestsellers in their day. Riding the wave of his popularity, he captured the Republican Party nomination for president in 1856 but narrowly...