From Library Journal
Ten years after the official founding of America's first national park, Yellowstone was visited by Mary Bradshaw Richards and her husband, Jess, on a typical summer vacation tour. Of course in the late 1800s tours of the West were still quite arduous. Indian troubles (Nez Perce) still existed, roads were poor or nonexistent, and tent camping remained the height of luxury for a wilderness tour. Richards wrote a daily journal, which she published as a series of letters in her father's newspaper, the Salem Observer of Massachussets. The letters, which appear here as chapters, are well written and illuminating, footnoted with extensive editorial comentary by editor Slaughter. The modern interest in her account of Yellowstone would be mostly to gain historical perspective, as many of the trails she writes about are now gone or paved-over; even some of the geysers, about which Richards waxes poetic in the style of the 1880s, are now quiet. This book is recommended for the true and total Yellowstone fan and for comprehensive Western Americana collections. [Illustrations and maps not seen.]-Thomas K. Fry, Penrose Lib., Univ. of Denve.
--Thomas K. Fry, Penrose Lib., Univ. of Denver
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--Thomas K. Fry, Penrose Lib., Univ. of Denver
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
