Author: Charles River Editors
Narrator: Scott Clem
Unabridged: 4 hr 22 min
Format: Digital Audiobook
Publisher: Findaway Voices
Published: 10/24/2019
The westward movement of Americans in the 19th century was one of the largest and most consequential migrations in history, and as it so happened, paths across the West were being formalized and coming into use right around the time gold was discovered in the lands that became California in January 1848. Located thousands of miles away from the country’s power centers on the East Coast at the time, the announcement came a month before the Mexican-American War had ended, and among the very few Americans that were near the region at the time, many of them were Army soldiers who were participating in the war and garrisoned there. San Francisco was still best known for being a Spanish military and missionary outpost during the colonial era, and only a few hundred called it home. Mexico’s independence, and its possession of those lands, had come only a generation earlier.
While the California Gold Rush brought about the first major mining towns and established Los Angeles and San Francisco as major cities, other boomtowns would be built almost overnight alongside the discovery of other mineral deposits like silver. Perhaps the most famous was Tombstone, a frontier boomtown in Arizona that came to symbolize everything about the Wild West. In many ways, Tombstone fit all the stereotypes associated with that era in American history. A dusty place on the outskirts of civilization, Tombstone brought together miners, cowboys, lawmen, saloons, gambling, brothels, and everything in between, creating an environment that was always colorful and occasionally fatal. Those characteristics might not have distinguished Tombstone from other frontier outposts like Deadwood in the Dakotas, but some of the most famous legends of the West called Tombstone home for many years, most notably the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday. And ultimately, the relationships and rivalries forged by those men in Tombstone culminated in the legendary Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
By the second half of the 19th century, still less than a century old, the United States had become a regional power. It had soundly defeated its southern neighbor, Mexico, and greatly enlarged itself in the process. America’s navy and mercha...
Explore the captivating life of Andrew Jackson!When Jackson left the White House after two presidential terms, he had achieved a rare feat: He left office with even more popularity than when he first entered it. His reputation as a strong president ...
Many of the first artists in the West were assigned to exploration and geological parties, working as archivists and obedient to demands of cold accuracy. However, a few were driven by an imaginative mix of real events and fantastical visions to whe...
In 1804, President Jefferson asked two Virginians-Meriwether Lewis and William Clark-to lead an expedition into the unexplored wilderness of North America. The journals of these explorers are both a priceless piece of national history and a great ad...
In the 1600s, cotton and silk fabrics that bore colorful and exotic printed patterns, known as “calico,” were flying off the shelves of the East India Company’s stores. The rapidly escalating demand for calico had taken a visible ...
By the golden age of the mountain man in the mid-19th-century, there were perhaps only 3,000 living in the West. Their origins were disparate, although they included many Anglo-Americans. A good number hailed from wilderness regions of Kentucky and...
Explore the captivating life of Martin Van Buren History chiefly remembers Martin Van Buren as the eighth president of the United States (1837- 1841). He was also, however, notable for achieving many firsts in American politics. He was th...
Many of the first artists in the West were assigned to exploration and geological parties, working as archivists and obedient to demands of cold accuracy. However, a few were driven by an imaginative mix of real events and fantastical visions to wh...
During the Civil War, over 180,000 black men fought in volunteer units as part of the United States Colored Troop (USCT), but it was only after the end of it that they were allowed to enlist in the Regular Army. They did so in four segregated regime...