Lost Trails of the Cimarron is Harry Chrisman's folk history of nineteenth-century Cimarron country - southwestern Kansas, southeastern Colorado, and the neutral strip of Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. Buffalo hunters entered the area in violation of the Medicine Lodge Treaty, followed by cowboys and settlers who formed a vast economy based on grass and beef, the beginnings of prominent cattle ranches such as the Westmoreland-Hitch Outfit. Chrisman details the history of the outlaws and ruffians of "No Man's Land" and trail drives to Dodge City and beyond. Numerous illustrations accompany the anecdotes and stories of various frontier personalities. A new foreword by Jim Hoy also appears in this edition.

A chronicle of adventure and discovery in the green, deadly world of the jungle. This extraordinary first-hand account of seven explorations into the heart of the lost world of the Amazon Basin and its mountain ramparts has been made available for publication after more than a quarter of a century’s silence. On his eighth and final expedition, Colonel P. H. Fawcett vanished into the jungle wilderness; to this day his fate is unknown. Before he began his last trip he set down the story of the expeditions he had completed, and his son, Brian Fawcett, here presents it together with a summary of the attempts to solve the mystery of his father’s disappearance. Colonel Fawcett was an explorer in the great tradition. He believed that somewhere in the unmapped heart of South America were the ruins of cities whose discovery would confirm many Indian legends that had come down from the days of the conquistadores. Trained in the exacting techniques of exploration-survey, he accepted an opportunity to determine the boundary line between Bolivia and Peru, and in 1906 set out on the first of his expeditions. It and the ones that followed over the next fifteen years have become classics of exploration; Colonel Fawcett combined the discipline of a scientist-engineer with the imaginative daring of a man not afraid to gamble his life on a bold conjecture. In 1921 he set down the narrative of his first seven trips. When he failed to return from the eighth, publication was delayed until it became certain that he would never be able to complete his manuscript. But the reader will find here a wholly engrossing story of a great search written with modesty and great skill, the work of a brave and mature man who possessed both a purpose and a dream. The result is a book which will remain a classic in its field.

The westward migration of nearly half a million Americans in the mid-nineteenth century looms large in U.S. history. Classic images of rugged Euro-Americans traversing the plains in their prairie schooners still stir the popular imagination. But this traditional narrative, no matter how alluring, falls short of the actual—and far more complex—reality of the overland trails. Among the diverse peoples who converged on the western frontier were African American pioneers—men, women, and children. Whether enslaved or free, they too were involved in this transformative movement. Sweet Freedom’s Plains is a powerful retelling of the migration story from their perspective. Tracing the journeys of black overlanders who traveled the Mormon, California, Oregon, and other trails, Shirley Ann Wilson Moore describes in vivid detail what they left behind, what they encountered along the way, and what they expected to find in their new, western homes. She argues that African Americans understood advancement and prosperity in ways unique to their situation as an enslaved and racially persecuted people, even as they shared many of the same hopes and dreams held by their white contemporaries. For African Americans, the journey westward marked the beginning of liberation and transformation. At the same time, black emigrants’ aspirations often came into sharp conflict with real-world conditions in the West. Although many scholars have focused on African Americans who settled in the urban West, their early trailblazing voyages into the Oregon Country, Utah Territory, New Mexico Territory, and California deserve greater attention. Having combed censuses, maps, government documents, and white overlanders’ diaries, along with the few accounts written by black overlanders or passed down orally to their living descendants, Moore gives voice to the countless, mostly anonymous black men and women who trekked the plains and mountains. Sweet Freedom’s Plains places African American overlanders where they belong—at the center of the western migration narrative. Their experiences and perspectives enhance our understanding of this formative period in American history.

In the first decades of the 1800s, white Americans entered the rugged lands of Arkansas, which they had little explored before. They established new towns and developed commercial enterprises alongside Native Americans indigenous to Arkansas and other tribes and nations that had relocated there from the East. This history is also the story of Arkansas's people, and is told through numerous biographies, highlighting early life in frontier Arkansas over a period of 200 years. The book provides a categorical look at commerce and portrays the social diversity represented by both prominent and common Arkansans--all grappling for success against extraordinary circumstances.

Jones Mountain, in Shenandoah National Park, has two sites of prehistoric Indian camps, more than 20 former homesites, old cemeteries, distillery works, mill sites, and abandoned railroad lines and logging roads. This book is the story of the mountain and the people who lived there, left their mark, and died there.

A new American journey.