Editor Mark Parsons compiled CROSSING THE PLAINS 1844-1869 from many sources for the student and teacher alike to grasp the subject that so dominated our country during those years. He has brought it together, mostly chronologically, just the way it happened, where and why.
In the 1840s, our little Republic’s states were looking at the West Coast of North America as the land of plenty and ripe for expansion. We stated moving west. When gold was discovered in California in 1848, it lit a fire to a smoldering wish to expand.
Using period paintings, photographs and maps, he draws the reader along the trails, over the mountains and into the valleys of their new lands. Following behind them, the stagecoaches, pony express and the telegraph poles.
When the Transcontinental rail lines connected at Promontory Point, Utah in 1869 it marked the end of 25 years of blazing trails in the wilderness to the new states of California, Oregon and the Washington Territory and an easier way to move either east or west.
The editor has brought together the information needed to pack your wagon and head overland to the Pacific Ocean and the new land.
advertisement