When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led the Corps of Discovery on their epic journey across the American West, they were acting not only as territorial explorers but as diplomatic emissaries from the young United States to the Native American people they encountered. Castle McLaughlin's fresh ex[...]
'Railroad iron is a magician's rod in its power to evoke the sleeping energies of land and water.' America's Railroad Age was little more than a decade old when Ralph Waldo Emerson uttered these prophetic words. Railroads exercised a remarkable hold on the imagination. The railroad was not merely tr[...]
James P. Ronda holds the H. G. Barnard Chair in Western History at the University of Tulsa. He is also the author of Finding the West: Explorations with Lewis and Clark and Astoria and Empire, available in a Bison Books edition..[...]