From the time of Coronado's discovery to the era of modern ski resorts, men have been lured irresistibly to the Rocky Mountains. The author traces the range's colorful history.

A big city like St. Louis is the last place a mountain man like Preacher would pick a fight. But how else will he get at the ruthless power broker who is using fear and bloodshed to take over the western fur trade? Shaving his beard, posing as a greedy hayseed from Ohio, Preacher comes face-to-face with Shad Beaumont--who is leaving St. Louis with an army of hired gunmen...with Preacher on his tail. The odds couldn't be better, for the wild frontier...

Includes index, bibl., maps

For over thirty years, from the time of Lewis and Clark into the 1840s, the mountain men explored the Great American West. As trappers in a hostile, trackless land, their exploits opened the gates of the mountains for the wagon trains of pioneers who followed them. In Give Your Heart to the Hawks, Win Blevins presents a poetic tribute to these dauntless "first Westerners" and their incredible adventures. Here, among many, are the stories of:* John...

Journal of a Trapper is one of the most important first hand accounts of the mountain man era. In it, Russell provides a detailed narrative describing the day-to-day life of an ordinary trapper in the Rocky Mountains. The Journal begins when Russell hired on with Nathaniel Wyeth's second expedition to the west. He participated in the establishment of Fort Hall, and later became a free trapper. He trapped for nine years in the greater Yellowstone region...

"In the rich naturalist tradition of H Is for Hawk and The Soul of an Octopus, Beaverland tells the tumultuous, eye-opening story of how beavers and the beaver fur trade shaped America's history, culture, and environment. Before the American empires of steel and coal and oil, before the railroads, there was the empire of fur. Beginning with the early trans-Atlantic trade in North America, Leila Philip traces the beaver's profound influence on our...

"Luke Ransom was just eighteen years old when he answered an ad in a St. Louis newspaper that would change his life forever. The American Fur Company needed one-hundred enterprising men to travel up the Missouri River -- the longest in North America -- all the way to its source. They would hunt and trap furs for one, two, or three years. Along the way, they would face unimaginable hardships: grueling weather, wild animals, hunger, exhaustion, and...