9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Opening of the Roads to California, September 25, 2001
This review is from: The California Trail: An Epic with Many Heroes (Paperback)
Stewart tells us a splendid story. In 1840, California was there to be settled, but how to cross the deserts and mountains to reach it? Beginning with the Bartelson Party in 1841, pioneers blazed ever-better trails that avoided deserts, followed water, and crossed the mountains, especially the forbidding peaks of the Sierras. But even though trails improved, they were still treacherous, as shown by the doomed Donner Party in 1846. We get a fascinating picture of the West, and Stewart even takes on a trip along the California Trail, from Independence, Missouri to Sacramento via Fort Laramie, Wyoming's South Pass, Nevada's Humboldt River, and over Donner Pass. If you enjoy travel or American history, you can spend many, pleasant hours with this book.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
California's Wagon Train Migration, January 4, 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: The California Trail: An Epic with Many Heroes (Paperback)
Because my family also migrated to California (albiet in 1993) I have been interested in the history of the settling of the American west. This book was wonderfully informative but also very compelling reading. It chronicles the annual human migrations from the Missouri to California, including the ill-fated Donner party (in 1845)and the famous "49ers". The author did a very good job comparing the immigrants mode of travel, unique difficulties faced during each of these migration years, route finding and heroes and villans, and the sweat and tears progress which lead to the wider opening and settlement of the west.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the history of the settlement of the west or anyone who just wants to read a good old-fashioned adventure story based in historical fact.
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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Must Read For Every American, August 2, 2008
This review is from: The California Trail: An Epic with Many Heroes (Paperback)
The old West is a subject that has been poorly served by Hollywood and the current crop of academic writers eager to show that the US is a rogue nation fit only for extinction. Reading Stewart's book will change all that.
In 1957 I talked with a 96 year-old gentleman in Golden, CO, who was then living in a rooming house next to one of my college buddies. He claimed to have been the sheriff of Central City (CO) in the 1880s, which I later found to have been true. He talked about how the "fanners" (gunmen who fanned the hammers of their pistols with their non-gun hand) held no danger for him. He simply took careful aim with his pistol and shot them dead. He also favored using a shotgun in close quarters, and always shot first if his opponent started to draw his pistol. Myths like those he debunked and others like Indians circling wagon trains and shooting from horseback at men under cover need to be refuted.
This book is a reprint of the 1962 edition, and author Stewart, who also wrote the fine novels "Fire" and "Storm", writes in a style that seems somewhat enthusiastic to contemporary readers. Nor does he compare the subject period of 1840 to 1858 to current times and moralize against Bush, imperialism or the emmigrants' treatment of Indians. If you want to find fault with America, this book is not for you, but conversely, if you want to know what made America great, this is required reading.
There are many heroes here in Stewart's presentation, all with flaws, but most with outstanding physical and moral courage. American democracy was at its best in the emmigrant parties, who expected no help of any kind from their government and whose loyalties descending from family to friend to party to others in the same endeavor were evident to all. Indeed, these parties had no backing from government, corporations, or any other organizations, and the free enterprise ethic presented in such stark definition will be almost unrecognizable by those raised on improving the governmental nanny-state, or requiring free education, tenure, social security, unemployment, disability and health insurance (and cell phones) to make it through another day.
When decisions were made in the emmigrant parties the most risky option was usually chosen, and it needs to be emphasized that the lives of the decision-makers were what was at risk. This led to amazing feats and great suffering, experiences almost universally remembered by the participants as much less difficult than was actually the case, and even exciting and pleasant. Where was post-traumatic stress syndrome? Relief parties were organized by men sometimes at great expense and their own peril, yet expecting no reward or payment of any kind. It is sometimes said that adversity brings out the best in people -- if so, it was here in abundance.
Although the Donner party figures prominently in this book, it is only one of many parties whose experiences are presented in detail, and the only one that came to grief in the Sierras. The reader is treated to other epics such as Chiles's return to Missouri in 1842 starting from present-day Sacramento in April, crossing the Sierras through Tejon Pass north of Los Angeles, then up the east side of the Sierras to the Humbolt sink in Nevada, then east to Fort Hall in Idaho and Fort Bridger in Wyoming, south through Colorado to Santa Fe, and finally east to Independence, arriving on September 9th. One would search far and wide to find this story in an American history book. It must be remembered that history is not what happened, but what was recorded and how it is presented by writers and teachers who often change history to fit their own predilections. There is none of that here in Stewart.
A trek of 2,000 miles in a single season over a wilderness with few trails and without information on conditions ahead by unoutfitted parties was essentially a unique feat in the annals of mankind. The questions naturally become: "Who were they, why did they do it, how did they do it, and what enabled them to do it?"
Stewart answers all these questions, and his treatise should be read by all who would like to understand Americans and their basic ideas on self-reliance and freedom rather than change them.
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