"WANTED-YOUNG, SKINNY, WIRY FELLOWS NOT OVER 18. MUST BE EXPERT RIDERS, WILLING TO FACE DEATH DAILY. ORPHANS PREFERRED. WAGES $25 PER WEEK. APPLY, CENTRAL OVERLAND PONY EXPRESS." The Pony Express lasted only about 19 months and was a financial failure. Yet, like each of the 11 other legendary American trails in this book, the 1,966-mile "express" contributed a spectacular chapter to American history.
Texas-born historian and author Bruce Grant portrays the trails in terms of the people who blazed them, suffered and died along them, and eventually followed them to the conquest of a continent. The Indians' footpaths originally marked out many of the trail routes. Then came the trappers, explorers, cowboys, settlers, and soldiers. Many men rode or trudged these trails to remarkable destinies, among them Paul Revere, Daniel Boone, Buffalo Bill, and Brigham Young, not to mention all those hard-bitten cowpokes whose hardships inspired more than 1,000 comic verses to the ballad The Old Chisholm Trail.
Full-color reproductions of dramatic paintings by famous artists like Charles M. Russell and Frederic Remington illustrate each trail. Complementing the text are numerous drawings and maps by well-known illustrator Lorence Bjorklund.
Famous American Trails vividly highlights for young and old alike a portion of our country's heritage that is as dramatic now as it was vital then.
—from the back cover
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