TABLE OF CONTENTS
[Preface] v I The Land and the People [Frémont Crosses the Sierras] 1 [Colonel John Frémont Describes His Expedition] 1 [The Desert Barrier] 5 [Sarah Royce Crosses the Desert] 5 [A Tour on the Prairies] 8 [Henry Ellsworth Accompanies Washington Irving Across the Plains] 8 [The Indians] 11 [Francis Parkman Describes the Dahcotahs] 11 [The Trappers] 13 [Isaac Jones Wistar Endures a Hard Winter] 13 [The Emigrants] 16 [Francis Parkman Encounters a Wagon Train] 16 II The Conquest [To California by Sea] 19 [Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Visits the Coast of California] 20 [A Day with the Cow Column] 22 [Jesse Applegate Herds Cattle on the Oregon Trail] 22 [The Donner Party Starves] 25 [Virginia Reed Murphy Survives a Terrible Ordeal] 25 [Mark Twain Rides the Overland Stage] 28 [A Memorable Account of Stagecoach Travel from Roughing It] 28 [The Coming of the Railroad] 31 [Walt Whitman Writes of the Continental Railroad] 31 [Samuel Bowles Travels on the Union Pacific] 32 III The Mining Frontier [The Discovery of Gold] 35 [Walter Colton Describes the Effect of the Discovery] 36 [Eldorado: Bayard Taylor Visits the Mining Camps] 37 [Mark Twain Doesn’t Strike It Rich] 40 IV The Ranching Frontier [The Long Drive] 44 [Andy Adams Encounters Rustlers] 44 V The Farming Frontier [Homesteading in the Dakotas] 50 [O. E. Rölvaag Pictures the Norwegian Settlers] 50 [The Land Rush in Oklahoma] 55 [Hamilton Wicks Races to Guthrie] 55
The picture on [page 1], George Catlin’s “Buffalo Hunt on Snow Shoes,” was reprinted through the courtesy of the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art. The picture on [page 19], “The Meeting of the Rails,” was reprinted through the courtesy of the United States Bureau of Public Roads. The picture on the [cover]; the picture on [page 35], of gold mining in California; the picture on [page 44], of Texas cattle being driven to the cattle rendezvous; and the picture on [page 50], of plowing on the prairies west of the Mississippi, were reprinted through the courtesy of the Library of Congress.