From slaughters, shootouts, and massacres to maulings, lynchings, and natural disasters, Cowboys, Mountain Men, and Grizzly Bears cuts to the chase of what draws people to the history and literature of the Wild West. Matthew P. Mayo, noted author of Western novels, takes the fifty wildest episodes in the region’s history and presents them in one action-packed volume. Set on the plains, mountains, and deserts of the West, and arranged chronologically, they capture all the mystique and allure of that special time and place in America’s history. Read about: John Colter’s harrowing escape from the Blackfeet Hugh Glass’s six-week crawl to civilization after a grizzly attack Janette Riker’s brutal winter in the Rockies John Wesley Powell’s treacherous run through the rapids of the Grand Canyon The Earp Brothers’ hot-tempered gun battle at Tombstone General Custer’s ill-advised final clash with the Sioux

An informative, fascinating resource suitable for students, researchers, and general readers, this biographical dictionary is a "who was who" of world and space explorers, giving readers a sense of the human drama—the achievements and the challenges—that those who go where few or none have gone before must face. The explorers covered include Jacques Cousteau, Sir Vivian Fuchs, John Glenn Jr., Aleksei Leonov, Annie Peck, Valentina Tereshkova, and many more.

An English teenager sails to America in 1865 and finds work driving stagecoaches on the Santa Fe Trail. He encounters Indian attacks and numerous adventures and deadly dangers on the frontier. He becomes friends with many of the famous frontiersmen during these adventures along the trail. He ends up being married to a Kiowa princess who later gets raped and killed by outlaws, and he seeks revenge—killing four, with the last one killed years later by the townsfolk on the Oklahoma border. He ends up to be a famous horse breeder and dies in Southeast Colorado at the age of seventy on the Santa Fe Trail.

Portrays 125 years of steam engine operations on the railroad.

Following Zebulon Pike’s expeditions in the early nineteenth century, U.S. expansionists focused their gaze on the Southwest. Explorers, traders, settlers, boundary adjudicators, railway surveyors, and the U.S. Army crossed into and through New Mexico, transforming it into a battleground for competing influences determined to control the region. Previous histories have treated the Santa Fe trade, the American occupation under Colonel Stephen W. Kearny, the antebellum Indian Wars, debates over slavery, the Pacific Railway, and the Confederate invasion during the Civil War as separate events in New Mexico. In Coast-to-Coast Empire, William S. Kiser demonstrates instead that these developments were interconnected parts of a process by which the United States effected the political, economic, and ideological transformation of the region. New Mexico was an early proving ground for Manifest Destiny, the belief that U.S. possession of the entire North American continent was inevitable. Kiser shows that the federal government’s military commitment to the territory stemmed from its importance to U.S. expansion. Americans wanted California, but in order to retain possession of it and realize its full economic and geopolitical potential, they needed New Mexico as a connecting thoroughfare in their nation-building project. The use of armed force to realize this claim fundamentally altered New Mexico and the Southwest. Soldiers marched into the territory at the onset of the Mexican-American War and occupied it continuously through the 1890s, leaving an indelible imprint on the region’s social, cultural, political, judicial, and economic systems. By focusing on the activities of a standing army in a civilian setting, Kiser reshapes the history of the Southwest, underlining the role of the military not just in obtaining territory but in retaining it.

From ghost towns to Native Americans to the state flower, author Phyllis Perry collected stories and ideas from all over Colorado in order to take a fresh approach to the state's history. In this fun and entertaining new book, every aspect of the state is explored, from national parks and wildlife to early explorers and Native peoples, the state's railroading and mining days to its state symbols and modern-day landmarks. Every chapter contains unique photographs and intimate stories about Colorado's fascinating and diverse characters. A unique and fun reference, A Kid's Look at Colorado is a must-have for young Colorado enthusiasts!

A trail guide describing the road behind Mission Peak, many times overlooked by the basic hikers. Filled with photographs, some long unseen, it outlines the land history from the squatters in the 1850's to the present day owners.

At the End of the Santa Fe Trail, first published in 1932 (and reprinted in 1948), is Sister Blandina Segale's account of her life in the southwestern U.S. from 1872 to 1892. Sister Blandina (1850-1941), born in Italy and emigrating with her family to Cincinnati when she was a child, worked with the poor, the sick, immigrants, prisoners, and Native Americans while in Trinidad, Colorado, and in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico (and later in Ohio). The book is based in large part on her journal and on the letters she exchanged with her sister Justina, who was also a religious sister in Ohio. At a time when lawlessness and brutality were the norm, Sister Blandina displayed courage, tough-mindedness, and a deep religious faith in service to the less-fortunate. Recent efforts have been made by the Archdiocese of Santa Fe to have Sister Blandina made a saint.