Popular culture has taught us to picture the Old West as a land of men, whether it's the lone hero on horseback or crowds of card players in a rough-and-tumble saloon. But the taming of the frontier involved plenty of women, too-and this book tells their stories. At first, female pioneers were indeed rare-when the town of Denver was founded in 1859, there were only five women among a population of almost a thousand. But the adventurers arrived, slowly...

In 1846, the eighty-seven members of the Donner Party left Illinois to begin a new life in California. Many pioneers made this journey, but the Donner Party faced delays and terrible misfortune. Trapped with few supplies in the snowy Sierra Nevada for the winter, what would the travelers do to survive? To understand the impact of a disaster, you must understand its causes. How did taking an untested shortcut affect the Donner Party's progress? How...

Details the lives of pioneers during the westward expansion of the early nineteenth century.

Pursued by a Texas bounty hunter, Matthew returns to Fountain Creek, Colorado, to apologize to his brother for insulting his wife Annabelle and to share his Idaho homestead. Learning that his brother has left already, he answers an ad for someone to guide a widow to Idaho. But he's shocked to see the widow is Annabelle--a woman whose sordid past repulses him.