Just as he did in his two earlier narrative histories, Hard and Noble Lives and The State of Equality in the Equality State, Paul Jensen again brings history and its characters to life, this time along Horse Creek, near Daniel, Wyoming. From the mountain men of the 1830’s to the homesteaders of the twentieth century, Horse Creek served as the crossroads of Western exploration and expansion. The stickers, who beat the odds by surviving and succeeding, built their ranches and the surrounding communities. Paul and his family live along Horse Creek. He is committed to its history and preservation.
ISBN – 978-1-932636-82-6
190 Pages
Prong Horn Press, 2011
For Madison “Mazy” Bacon, a young wife living in southern Wisconsin, the future appears every bit as promising as it is reassuringly predictable. A loving marriage, a well organized home, the pleasure of planting an early spring garden, these are the carefully tended dreams that sustain her heart and nourish her soul.
But when her husband of two years sells the homestead and informs her that they are heading west, Mazy’s life is ripped down the middle like a poorly mended sheet forgotten in a midwestern storm. Her love is tried, her boundaries stretched, and the fabric of her faith tested. At the same time, she and eleven extraordinary women are pulled toward an un-certain destiny, one that binds them together through reluctance and longing and into acceptance and renewal.
ISBN – 978-1-5786-232-9
406 Pages
Waterbrook Press, 2000
Traces the Lewis and Clark Expedition from its very beginnings at Monticello and the White House, through Pennsylvania, down the Ohio River, up the Mississippi to Missouri River — on to the Pacific Ocean, and back.
Detailed maps show the Corps of Discovery’s path and today’s routes.
ISBN – 978-1-56037-803-7
120 Pages
Farcountry Press, 2022
Zuni Boy Runs the Race of His Life
Ever since he can remember, Amee-nah has dreamed of being a firefighter like his father, who died a hero when Amee-nah was little.
But there is a big obstacle: Amee-nah was born with a clubfoot, making it hard for him to run properly. He hates his twisted foot because it means he is left out of exciting adventures with the other Zuni boys. With all his heart he wishes he could go to sheep camp in the summer, where the boys run the hillsides looking for wolves and bobcats that might trouble the sheep. But even more, Amee-nah longs to compete in the annual stickrace, a grueling 25-mile relay.
Little does Amee-nah know that he is in for the most thrilling summer of his life. After Coach K from the mission school arranges for Amee-nah to have corrective surgery on his foot, will the boy’s dreams begin to come true?
ISBN – 1-880114-15-1
155 Pages
Grandview Publishing Company, 1995
Are you ready to enjoy a delicious variety of dishes? Then you’re ready to “dig into” American West Cookin’! With over 330 western recipes that range from old-time ranch cook standby’s to modern dishes served up by today’s professional chefs, there is a little something for everyone’s taste.
You will enjoy the full color reproductions of western artist Robert E. Kerby’s newest oil paintings as well as his pen and ink illustrations. Plus…throughout American West Cookin’ you’re going to run into several catchy little sayings or quips from the West which may provide some interesting “Food For Thought”, a little insight into “Cowboy Logic”, or possibly just a pinch of “Light Hearted Humor”.
ISBN – 978-0-9660523-1-2
156 Pages
Bob Kerby’s Longhorn Studio, 2002
Annie Elizabeth Dougherty Ruff lived an extraordinary life – by any measure. Indeed, Annie Ruff was one of very few individuals, male or female, to undertake a traverse of the expansive American frontier on both the Oregon and the Santa Fe Roads. As the wife of captain Charles Frederick Ruff, she trekked to Fort Vancouver in 1849, in company with the U.S. Army Mounted Riflemen. In the latter 1850’s, she traveled the length of the Santa Fe Road on multiple occasions, accompanying her husband to his distant posts during the campaigns of the U.S. Army against Indians of the Southwest.
ISBN – 978-1-4951-5709-7
695 Pages
Sam Clark Publishing Co., 2015
Ancestors of today’s Native Americans populated the Great Plains about 14,000 years ago, about the time glaciers of the last ice age began melting back to the north. Prehistoric people living on the dry plains east of the Rocky Mountains were hunter-gatherers–they moved from place to place in search of animals to hunt and seeds, roots, and berries to gather. Archaeologists have reconstructed the history of these hunter-gatherers by studying old campsites and tools made of stone and antler. This book introduces readers to the science of archaeology , shedding light on how field scientists find evidence of people who did not build permanent houses and how researchers determine the age of an arrowhead and what it was to kill.
Illustrations bring to life the day-to-day activities of these early people, such as how they used drivelines to funnel animals over buffalo jumps, how sinew was used to attach points to spears, and how grinding stones were used to mash seeds into flour.
ISBN – 978-0-84742-692-8
80 Pages
Mountain Press Publishing Company, 2019
Bent’s Fort was a landmark of the American frontier, a huge private fort on the upper Arkansas River in present southeastern Colorado. Established by the adventurers Charles and William Bent, it stood until 1849 as the center of the Indian trade of the central plains. David Lavender’s chronicle of these men and their part in the opening of the West has been conceded a place beside the works of Parkman and Prescott.
ISBN – 978-0-8032-5753-5
479 Pages
University of Nebraska Press, 1972
Renowned as a hardy mountain man, he ranged the Missouri, Big Horn, Yellowstone, and Sweetwater River country between 1823 and 1833. He hunted beaver, fought Indians, and unwittingly opened the West for settlers by proving that wagons could be used effectively on the Oregon Trail. But financial success and silk hats, which strangled the fur trade, eventually led him to take up a less adventuresome life in St. Louis as a gentleman farmer, businessman, and politician.
Sublette helped develop the rendezvous system in the fur trade and blazed the first wagon trail through South Pass. He also established the post later renamed Fort Laramie, helped lay the foundation for present Kansas City, and left a large fortune to excite envy and exaggeration. One of the most successful fur merchants of the West, he also helped to break John Jacob Astor’s monopoly of the trade.
ISBN – 978-0-8061-1111-7
279 Pages
The University of Oklahoma Press, 1959
Did you know…that bison have a thick, shaggy coat that is so insulated that snow can settle on their backs without melting. Bison have poor eyesight, but acute hearing and excellent sense of smell. They are the largest land animals in North America, and can be found in plains, prairies and river valleys.
The American Buffalo — our nation’s official mammal — is an improbable, shaggy beast that has found itself at the center of many of our most mythic and sometimes heartbreaking tales. The largest land animals in the Western Hemisphere, they are survivors of a mass extinction that erased ancient species that were even larger. For nearly ten thousand years, they evolved alongside Native people who weaved them into every aspect of daily life; relied on them for food, clothing, and shelter; and revered them as equals.
Newcomers to the continent found the buffalo fascinating at first, but in time they came to consider the animals a hindrance to a young nation’s expansion. And in the space of only a decade, buffalo were slaughtered by the millions for their hides, with their carcasses left to rot on the prairies. Then, teetering on the brink of disappearing from the face of the earth, they were at last rescued by a motley collection of Americans, each of them driven by different — and sometimes competing — impulses. This is the rich and complicated history of a young republic’s heedless rush to conquer a continent, but it is also one of the dawn of conservation era — a story of America at its very best and worst.
ISBN – 978-0-593-53734-3
329 Pages
Knopf Publishers, 2023
Known by the Indians as “Broken Hand”, Thomas Fitzpatrick was a trapper and a trailblazer who became the head of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. With Jedediah Smith he led the trapper band that discovered South Pass; he then shepherded the first two emigrant wagon trains to Oregon, was official guide to Fremont on his longest expedition, and guided Colonel Phil Kearny and his Dragoons along the westward trails to impress the Indians with howitzers and swords. Fitzpatrick negotiated the Fort Laramie treaty of 1851 at the largest council of Plains Indians ever assembled. Among the most colorful of Mountain Men, Fitzpatrick was also party to many of the most important events in the opening of the West.
ISBN: 0-8032-7208-1
359 Pages
University of Nebraska Press, 1981
The beaver is North America’s largest rodent. It is one of the most important animals in the history of western expansion in North America. Beavers were hunted by Indians, European settlers and trappers. Mountain men hunted the beaver to meet the European fashion demand. By the mid-19th century the beaver had become nearly extinct. Fortunately, it was saved when the demand for silk hats replaced the desire for beaver felt hats.
Bucka Beaver Jr. measures 5 1/4 inches tall from the sitting position and 3 inches at the widest part.
Author Bill Betenson is the great-grandson of Butch Cassidy’s younger sister Lula. He inherited his great-grandmother’s archives and her interest in setting the record straight. Now he focuses on Butch’s exploits in Wyoming and tries to unravel the sometimes conflicting information with care and honesty. Butch Cassidy is alive for Bill Betenson, and this book brings him to life for readers.
Tenacious researcher Bill Betenson brings new details and interpretations about his great uncle.
ISBN – 978-1-937147-22-8
188 Pages
High Plains Press, 2020
In 1832, Benjamin Bonneville led the first wagon train across the Continental Divide on the Oregon Trail. Financed by a rival of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Bonneville and more than one hundred traders and trappers traveled from Fort Osage on the Missouri River, up to the Platte River and across present-day Wyoming. Washington Irving first gave the U.S. Army officer a brand by chronicling the three-year explorations in the 1837 book The Adventures of Captain Bonneville. Historians have long suspected that the captain, under the guise of commercial fur trading, was preparing for an eventual invasion of Mexico’s California territory. Bonneville’s 1833 report concerning his first year in the Wind River Range and beyond remained lost for almost a century before resurfacing in the 1920s. Author Jett B. Conner examines the intriguing details revealed in that historic document.
ISBN – 978-1-4671-4864-1
142 Pages
The History Press, 2021
Following the Lewis and Clark expedition, “mountain men” fanned out across the Rocky Mountains to explore the promise of a new frontier, trapping beaver and opening up the trade routes that become the famous Oregon Trail. From 1825 – 40, trappers, traders and American Indians journeyed thousands of miles to the annual Rendezvous, a monthlong gathering for trading, swapping stories, carousing and enjoying all manner of raucous entertainment. Carl Roters’ epic Rendezvous Murals bring to life this colorful era of American history. His vibrant images, created with innovative media and techniques, are published here for the first time.
ISBN – 0-9748030-0-6
149 Pages
Venture Development Group, 2004
