Historian and four-time Spur Award winner Walker chronicles the early days of the American Pacific Northwest in two engrossing accounts, now available in one volume. Tall Premium Edition. Original.

"Walker constructs a compelling narrative that is a string of unusual profiles rather than an analytic account of a major event in American history." - Publishers Weekly The Oregon Country! For a century that fabled place, lying somewhere beyond the Rocky Mountains at the farthest reaches of the continent galvanized the American people. Its riches, in furs, timber, fish, and fecund soil for farming, awakened the avarice of nations. Spain, Great Britain, Russia, and the United States all vied for this trackless Eden of the pacific littoral, and not until the 1840s did the Americans claim it once and for all. In these pages are the explorations of the fierce Scots who scaled the mountains and mapped the rivers of the Oregon country before the time of Lewis and Clark; the imperial fiefdom created for profit and Britannia by the fur-trading ventures of the Hudson's Bay Company; John Jacob Astor's ill-fated experiment on the Columbia River; the mountain men who risked their lives in Indian country in pursuit of beaver furs; and the arrival of the missionaries and pioneers of the Oregon Trail. Pacific Destiny is the Spur Award-winning story for best historical non-fiction, told by a distinguished chronicler of nineteenth century America. A story of the clashing of empires, coveting the matchless wealth of the Pacific Northwest-the story of The Oregon Country. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

From the Indians who inhabited the land before the first Europeans saw it through the warfare that would finally leave the province in American hands, this book, by the author of "Legends and Lies", traces the history of California.

"Gold! Gold on the American River!" This declaration, shouted in the streets of San Francisco in the spring of 1848, electrified the nation, and its echo was heard in the farthest corners of the globe. In the five years that followed, tens of thousands of hopeful argonauts made their way to the vast territory on the Pacific conquered by the United States in its recent war with Mexico. They traveled overland from the Missouri River, their ox-drawn wagons crossing the Rocky Mountains, vast plains and deserts, and the formidable peaks of the Sierra Nevada. They journeyed by boat and on foot across the fever-ridden jungles of the Isthmus of Panama. They took ship from eastern seaports and sailed sixteen thousand miles via Cape Horn to the gateway of the goldfields, the new city of San Francisco. In Eldorado, award-winning historian Dale L. Walker presents the complete, often gaudy, always fascinating story of the California Gold Rush, the greatest mining bonanza in all of American history. The story ranges from the discovery by a New Jersey carpenter at a sawmill north of Sutter's Fort to the advent of large-scale hydraulic mining that spelled the ruination of the land and the end of the boom days when a Forty-niner with a pick and a pan found "colors" in a streamed and earned his wages-an ounce of raw gold a day. Walker's narrative of this pivotal event of American history is drawn from the lives and experiences of those "on the ground" in the rush, those who blazed the trails and settled the West in their search for the riches at the rainbow's end. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Mary Edwards Walker (1832-1919) defied the conventions of her era. Born and raised on a farm in Oswego, New York, Walker became one of a handful of female physicians in the nation-and became a passionate believer in the rights of women. Despite the derision of her contemporaries, Walker championed freedom of dress. She wore slacks--or "bloomers" as they were popularly known--rather than the corsets and voluminous ground-dragging petticoats and dresses she believed were unhygenic and injurious to health. She lectured and campaigned for woman's suffrage and for prohibition, and against tobacco, traditional male-dominated marriage vows, and any issue involving the sublimation of her sex. From the outset of the Civil War, Walker volunteered her services as a physician. Despite almost universal opposition from army commanders and field surgeons, Walker served at Manassas, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Chickamauga, and other bloody theaters of the war. She ministered to wounded and maimed soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict. Captured by Confederates near Chattanooga in 1864, she served four months in a Southern prison hellhole where she nursed and tended to wounded prisoners of war. For her services in the war, in 1865 Mary Edwards Walker was awarded the Medal of Honor, becoming the only woman in American history to receive the nation's highest award for military valor. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The American West. Just as America attracted millions to her shores by building upon a foundation of freedom, democracy, and a new start, the lands beyond the Mississippi would also attract people from all over the world with visions of opportunity and wide open spaces and provide America with legends and myths that have yet to die. In Westward, the history of the Old American West unfolds in twenty-eight original stories written especially for this unique collection that commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of Western Writers of America. Featuring stories handpicked by four-time Spur Award-winning author Dale L. Walker, Westward is a time capsule of the Old American West, from the first horse ever seen by a North American Indian to a man who escaped from the Alamo, from the massacre at Mountain Meadows to Libbie Custer's great secret, from the Apache wars to the California gold rush. And such luminaries of the West as Crazy Horse, Jim Bridger, Jedediah Smith, King Fisher, Doc Holliday, Belle Starr, John Wesley Hardin, and the one black man to accompany the Lewis and Clark expedition are brought to life in these colorful and dramatic tales. Here, the ghosts of the Old West, some already there, others lured to that vast and trackless land of the setting sun, will talk to you in this volume of short stories to be treasured. Includes new short fiction by: Arthur Winfield Knight Bill Crider Bill Gulick C. F. Eckhardt Cotton Smith Dale L. Walker Dan Aadland Don Coldsmith Elaine Long Emery L. Mehok Ivon B. Blum James Reasoner Janet E. Graebner John Jakes John V. Breen Lenore Carroll Linda Sandifer Loren D. Estleman Matt Braun Michelle Black Otis Carney Richard C. House Richard S. Wheeler Riley Froh Rod Miller Susan K. Salzer Troy D. Smith Win Blevins At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Discusses Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickcock, Sam Houston, Thomas Meagher, Meriwether Lewis, Pat Garrett and Jack London.