Search results for ""author stanley vestal""
University of Nebraska Press Jim Bridger: Mountain Man
Even among the mighty mountain men, Jim Bridger was a towering figure. He was one of the greatest explorers and pathfinders in American history. He couldn't write his name, but at eighteen he had braved the fury of the Missouri, ascending it in a keelboat flotilla commanded by that stalwart Mike Fink. By 1824, when he was only twenty, he had discovered the Great Salt Lake. Later he was to open the Overland Route, which was the path of the Overland Stage, the Pony Express, and the Union Pacific. One of the foremost trappers in the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, he was a legend in his own time as well as ours. He remains one of the most important scouts and guides in the history of the West.The Christian Science Monitor has called this biography "probably the fairest portrait of Jim Bridger in existence." The New York Times has praise for a "painstaking job of research among the usual Bridger sources and among some others which have been neglected. . . . [The author] has adequately set the scene for his hero's adventures and has honestly appraised the great guide's historical stature."Other Bison Books by Stanley Vestal: Dodge City: Queen of Cowtowns, Joe Meek: The Merry MOuntain Man; The Missouri, The Old Santa Fe Trail, and Warpath: The True Story of the Fighting Sioux Told in a Biography of Chief White Bull
£17.17
University of Nebraska Press Joe Meek: The Merry Mountain Man, A Biography
"A tall man, with long black hair, smooth face, dark eyes (inclining to turn his head a little to one side, as much as to say, 'I can tell you about it'), a harum-scarum, don't-care sort of man, full of life and fun. That's how a contemporary described Joe Meek."Born in Virginia, Joe Meek became a trapper, Indian fighter, pioneer, peace officer, frontier politician, and lover of practical jokes and Jacksonian democracy. He was a boon companion to two other larger-than-life mountain men, Kit Carson and Jim Bridger, and just as important in frontier history.In 1829, our nineteen-year-old hero joined the Rocky Mountain Fur Company of Jedediah Smith and the Sublettes and headed west on an odyssey of hair-raising high adventure and hilarious low comedy. For the next twelve years, the Rockies rang with tales of Joe's wild exploits. After the Last Rendezvous in 1840, he helped drive the first wagons to Oregon, served in the legislature of the provisional government, and went to Washington as a special envoy to President Polk. He later returned to Oregon to live out his days in the community that he helped build.
£16.99
