The Crossing of the Sierra Nevada in the Winter of 1843-44 PDF Download

Author: John Charles Frémont
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : California
Languages : en
Pages : 98

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Author: John Charles Frémont
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Pacific States
Languages : en
Pages : 78

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Author: Scott Stine
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806153148
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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From July to November 1833, Joseph R. Walker led a brigade of fifty-eight fur trappers, with two hundred horses and a year’s provisions, from the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming to the Pacific coast of central California. Toward the end of their journey the Walker brigade crossed the Sierra Nevada, becoming the first non-Native people to traverse the range from east to west. That crossing, made long and brutal by bewildering terrain and deep snow, is widely and rightly considered a milestone in the exploration of intermontane North America. Following Walker’s death in 1876, an alluring tale arose concerning his trans-Sierran route. In the course of the crossing, goes the story, Walker found himself on the northern rim of Yosemite Valley at the plungepoint of North America’s tallest waterfall, staring into the most awesome mountain chasm on the continent. Over the decades since then, this time-honored tale has hardened to folklore. Dozens of historical works have construed it as a towering moment in the opening of the West. But in fact this tale of Yosemite’s discovery has no basis or support in firsthand accounts of the 1833 Sierran crossing. Moreover, there is much in those accounts that contradicts Yosemite lore, and much that points to a trans-Sierran route well north of Yosemite Valley. In A Way Across the Mountain, Scott Stine reconstructs Walker’s 1833 route over the Sierra. Stine draws on his own intimate knowledge of the geomorphology, hydrography, biogeography, and climate of the Sierra Nevada and Great Basin, and employs the detailed travel narrative of the Walker brigade’s field clerk, Zenas Leonard. Stine documents the inception, growth, and persistence of the Yosemite Myth and explores the extent to which that lore has overshadowed Walker’s greatest discovery—that the huge swath of continent between the Wasatch Front and the Sierran crest is hydrographically closed, draining not to an ocean, but to salty lakes and desert sands.

Author: Tom Chaffin
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806146079
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 736

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“The most eloquent, understanding, and yet very candid biography of Frémont that has appeared to date”—Howard R. Lamar, Yale University The career of John Charles Frémont (1813–90) ties together the full breadth of American expansionism from its eighteenth-century origins through its culmination in the Gilded Age. Tom Chaffin's biography demonstrates Frémont's vital importance to the history of American empire, and illuminates his role in shattering long-held myths about the ecology and habitability of the American West. As the most celebrated American explorer and mapper of his time, Frémont stood at the center of the vast federal project of western exploration and conquest. His expeditions between 1838 and 1854 captured the public's imagination, inspired Americans to accept their nation's destiny as a vast continental empire, and earned him his enduring sobriquet, the Pathfinder. But Frémont was more than an explorer. Chaffin's dramatic narrative includes Frémont's varied experiences as an entrepreneur, abolitionist, Civil War general, husband to the remarkable Jessie Benton Frémont, two-time Republican presidential candidate, and Gilded Age aristocrat. This new paperback edition of Pathfinder features a new, additional, updated introduction by the author.

Author: Bruce C. Paton
Publisher: Fulcrum Publishing
ISBN: 9781555915179
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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This book is split into two sections, the first telling the stories of the expeditions of Alexander Mackenzie, Zebulon Pike, Lewis and Clark, John Wesley Powell, and more. The second part tells how they dealt with travel issues.

Author: Harlan D. Unrau
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Concentration camps
Languages : en
Pages : 534

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Author: Nevada Historical Society
Publisher:
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Category : Nevada
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Conservation of natural resources
Languages : en
Pages : 736

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Author: Harlan D. Unrau
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Historic sites
Languages : en
Pages : 524

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Author: Nevada State Historical Society
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 700

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