Mary Dodge Woodward, a fifty-six-year-old widow, moved from Wisconsin with her two grown sons and a daughter to a 1,500-acre bonanza wheat farm in Dakota Territory's Red River valley in 1882. For five years she recorded the yearly farm cycle of plowing and harvesting as well as the frustrations of gardening and raising chickens, the phenomenon of mirages on the plains, the awesome blizzard of 1888, her reliance on her family, and her close relationship with her daughter. She noted "blots, mistakes, joys, and sorrows" in her "olf friend." This Borealis edition brings back to print a valuable record of a frontier woman's life.

Portrays the life of General Custer and describes the massacre of him and his forces by the Indians at the Little Bighorn

American lore has slighted the cowgirl, although at least one can still be found in nearly every ranching community. Like her male counterpart, she rides and ropes, understands land and stock, and confronts the elements. The writer and photographer Teresa Jordan traveled sixty thousand miles in the American West, talking with more than a hundred authentic cowgirls running ranches and performing in rodeos. The result is a fascinating book that also situates the cowgirl in history and literature. A new preface and updated bibliography have been added to this Bison Book edition.

A colorful illustrated history of the American West that separates fact from fiction and shows exactly how "wild" the West really was.

Filled with helpful information that was essential for safe travel west as well as a fascinating view of the strenuous life faced by prairie travelers before the era of the railroad.

Albert Jerome Dickson was fourteen years old in 1864 when he left LaCrosse, Wisconsin, in a small caravan of covered wagons headed for Montana Territory. Thousands of emigrants had preceded him on the Oregon Trail, but none ever described the journey in sharper detail. Covered Wagon Days recreates the daily progress of Dickson's party, which included his guardians, Joshua and Rebecca Ridgley. The logistics of such a trip, the sights along a trail marked by ruts and fresh graves, the rigors of camping, the encounters with Indians and returning pilgrims and vigilantes running after road agents—all figure in Dickson's memoir. The payoff for the Ridgleys is not the gold being discovered in the mountains near Virginia City but a fine farm in Gallatin Valley. As vivid as any novel about the Oregon Trail and pioneering in the Northwest, Covered Wagon Days, first published in 1929, is based on journals and materials that were edited by the author's son, Arthur Jerome Dickson.

A true pioneer of the West, Harriet Backus writes about her amusing and often challenging experiences with heart-felt emotion and vivid detail. New foreword by Pam Houston and afterword by author's grandson Rob Walton are featured.

This study corrects the misperceptions of the American West based on representations from novels and films and shows how western history was--and is--a vast economic event

Now, for the first time, Robert K. DeArment has told the full story of George Scarborough

The best-selling author of Traitor to His Class presents a sweeping history of the settling of the American west, revealing how migrant dreams and the promises of riches inspired both courage and violence. 75,000 first printing. Tour.