Horatio's Drive recounts the simultaneously inspirational and hilarious saga of Horatio Nelson Jackson, an eccentric Vermont doctor, who in 1903 - on a visionary whim and a 50-dollar bet - became the first person to drive an automobile across the continent, heralding the future of the "horseless carriage" as a vehicle destined for more than inner-city travel and as a machine that would transform American life.

The Oregon Trail is an epic account of traveling the length of the Oregon Trail the old-fashioned way — in a covered wagon with a team of mules, an audacious journey that hasn’t been attempted in a century — which also chronicles the rich history of the trail, the people who made the migration, and its significance to the country. Spanning two thousand miles and traversing six states from Missouri to the Pacific coast, the Oregon Trail is the...

Presents the story of the Portuguese explorer who became the first European to cross the Pacific Ocean and whose expedition completed its voyage around the world after his death en route.

Two men who retraced Coronado's 1540-1541 journey across the Southwest describe their experiences battling heat, cold, and drought and present a portrait of the modern Southwest as Coronado might have viewed it.

After a wagon train hires Stephen Meek to guide them through part of the Oregon trail, they begin to doubt Meek knows the way and they must decide whether or not to trust a Native American man instead.

A young man and his dog drive west from Ohio and marvel at the farms of Iowa, the skies of Nebraska, the wind in Wyoming, the mountains of Colorado, the desert in Nevada, and the ocean in Oregon.

Along with a good rifle and a sturdy horse, this guide was an essential companion for any westward-bound pioneer of the nineteenth century. Its author, Captain Randolph B. Marcy of the U.S. Army, spent most of his military career in the West. At the invitation of the War Department, he shared the benefits of his frontier experience in this remarkable book. To today's reader, Marcy's manual offers a fascinating view of the rigors and hazards of crossing...

During the mid-nineteenth century, a quarter of a million travelers — men, women, and children — followed the “road across the plains” to gold rush California. This magnificent chronicle — the second installment of Will Bagley’s sweeping Overland West series — captures the danger, excitement, and heartbreak of America’s first great rush for riches and its enduring consequences. With narrative scope and detail unmatched by earlier histories,...

Examines the Oregon Trail by discussing how and why it came to be and the immediate and lasting effects it had on the nation and the people who traveled it.

Mountaineer, conservationist, and peerless naturalist, John Muir's writing overflows with a sense of delight and wonder, an almost 18th century sensibility of the beautiful and the sublime. Among the rugged peaks, icy lakes, and towering trees of California's mountains, beautifully and meticulously described in The Mountains of California, Muir discovered an environment that perfectly matched his own sensibility. In 1868, at the age of thirty, John...