Will Bagley

"History with its boots on," as Will Bagley and Harold Schindler describe it, West from Fort Bridger also may be the classic history of the opening of western trails. In it, the words of the immigrants, compiled from original diaries, journals, maps, and letters, recount a half-decade of historic pioneer treks, including the dramatic ordeals of the 1816 parties (the most remembered of whom were the Donners and Reeds) who crossed the infamous Hastings Cutoff. With these texts woven together by expansive and detailed introductions and annotation, Dale Morgan and Roderic Korns told the story of a critical period in westward migration. In 1951, Morgan, well-established as perhaps the most diligent and successful researcher of the early history of the American Far West, was rapidly becoming also one of its most prolific and expressive authors and editors. Korns himself had been a productive collector of historic sources and an avid trail historian. He died before the work Morgan had long urged him to write was written. Morgan used his own research as well as that of Korns to complete West from Fort Bridger, but gave all the credit, as a memorial, to his friend and colleague. Due to the small number of copies originally printed and to the passing of time, the book has long been out of print and hard to find, although its reputation has continued to grow. . In their revision of this landmark work, Bagley and Schindler have given Morgan the credit he deserves; have corrected and updated the original in accordance with Morgan's own notes for a revision as well as other, more recent research and writing; and have included new information on Hastings, immigrant parties, John C. Fremont's 1845 crossing of the Salt Desert, the Salt Lake Cutoff, and other subjects. With the approach of 150-year anniversaries of many of the events chronicled in West from Fort Bridger, readers, travelers, historians, and buffs can now consult the most historically accurate record of, and guide to, some of the earliest and most important routes through the western interior.

"Born on the frontier at American Fork, Utah Territory, two years after the Denver & Rio Grande Western reached town, Judge Wilson McCarthy lived to try to harness the wonders of the Atomic Age." "After a youth as a cowboy on the Canadian plains, Mormon missionary in Scotland, and law student at Columbia (while working for Tammany Hall), Judge McCarthy advanced from crusading district attorney to judge and banker. He then became one of the most powerful men in America as a director of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, Herbert Hoover's response to the Great Depression. His crowning achievement would be the rescue of a legendary American railroad." "The halcyon days of railroads have passed, but the legend of the Denver & Rio Grande lives on. Crossing the Continental Divide, the storied line hauled away vast mineral wealth but had to survive various corporate incarnations, business and political machinations, and a record that for a time earned it the nickname "Dangerous and Rapidly Growing Worse." McCarthy gave the road's employees a stake in the company's success and made it into a "western railroad operated by western men.""--BOOK JACKET.

"Beginning in the spring of 1969, Huckleberry Finn inspired a question: Could you build a raft, float down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, and on the way learn something about America and its peoples? Will Bagley, a vagrant longhair and future prize-winning western historian, and his friends could, and did. Now, a half century after the adventure, Bagley tells his story."--Provided by the publisher.

"The massacre at Mountain Meadows on September 11,1857, was the single most violent act to occur on the overland trails, yet it has been all but forgotten. Will Bagley's Blood of the Prophets is the most extensive investigation of the events surrounding the mass killings since Juanita Brooks published her study, The Mountain Meadows Massacre, in 1950."--BOOK JACKET.

The story of America's westward migration is a powerful blend of fact and fable. Over the course of three decades, almost a million eager fortune-hunters, pioneers, and visionaries transformed the face of a continent- and displaced its previous inhabitants. The people who made the long and perilous journey over the Oregon and California trails drove this swift and astonishing change. In "Overland West: the story of the Oregon and California Trails," the four volumes of the set tell the sweeping saga of how this 'road across the Plains' transformed the American West and became an enduring part of its legacy. -- from Book Jacket The first volume, subtitled "So rugged and mountainous: Blazing the trails to Oregon and California, 1812-1848," tells how this massive immigration began. Drawing on extensive research, the author has woven a wealth of primary sources- personal letters and journals, government documents, newspaper reports, and folk accounts- into a compelling narrative that reinterprets the first years of overland migration. It relates the story of remarkable men, women, and children who first traveled 'the plains across' from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean between 1812 and 1848, and who helped make the United States a continental nation. He folds into the narrative more than five hundred overland sources unknown to earlier scholars. And he particularly spotlights the crucial years between 1840 and 1848, when American adventurers, explorers, and farmers blazed wagon roads to the Pacific across both the Cascade Range and the Sierra Nevada, making the vainglorious concept of Manifest Destiny into flesh-and-blood reality. -- from Book Jacket The second volume, subtitled 'With golden visions before them : trails to the mining West, 1849-1852' captures the danger, excitement, and heartbreak of America's first great rush for riches and its enduring consequences as a quarter of a million travelers followed the 'road across the plains' in the mid-nineteenth century to the gold rush in California. With narrative scope and detail, the book tells this classic American saga through the voices of the people whose eyewitness testimonies vividly evoke the most dramatic era of westward migration. The gold rush epoch witnessed untold suffering and sacrifice, and the trails and their trials were enough to make many people turn back. Drawing from hundreds of previously unpublished diaries, letters, and recollections, the author describes the fortunes and misfortunes of gold-seeking forty-niners, Oregon-bound farmers, and Mormon pilgrims. Also discussed are America's native peoples, for whom the effect of the massive migration was no less than ruinous as thousand of intruders encroached on their ancient homelands. -- from Book Jacket