Bound for Montana: Diaries from the Bozeman Trail

Edited by Susan Badger Doyle

On May 14, 1866, Perry Burgess summed up the expectations and hopes of countless westering Americans when he wrote in his diary: "packed up and started on our journey toward the land of gold." Here are stories of the prospectors, freighters, wives, and merchants who, like Burgess, traveled the Bozeman Trail in search of fortune, adventure, or a new life.

A shortcut from the Platte River Road to the Montana goldfields, the Bozeman Trail was relatively short in length-less than five hundred miles-yet it has the enduring distinction of being the last great overland emigrant trail in the American West. Encounter the trail as it was experienced by seven travelers: the leader of a company of Michigan men who traveled with one of the first groups to cross it; a new bride traveling with her husband; two young men-a store clerk and a typesetter-for whom the trip was a thoroughly enjoyable adventure; a prospector out to make his fortune in the West; a sober Civil War veteran concerned about the possibility of Indian attack; and the supervisor of a freight train who found time to write despite his heavy responsibilities.

Join their journey through these annotated diaries, and discover the dangers and pleasures, frustrations and joys of travel on the Bozeman Trail.

372 pages, illus., maps
paper, ISBN 0-917298-98-5, $19.95

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MontanaMainstreets, Volume 1

A Guide to Historic Virginia City

by Marilyn Grant

The gold-rush-era town of Virginia City, recently purchased by the State of Montana to preserve for posterity, makes a fitting first subject for the Montana Mainstreets series. Once it was Montana's acting territorial capital and the center of trade for Alder Gulch, the site of the richest placer mines in the world, but Virginia City became a town almost frozen in time once gold deposits played out and the state capital moved to Helena in 1889. Today, Virginia City attracts visitors from all over the world, who marvel at its intact architecture. If walking down Virginia City's streets is like a trip backwards in time, the road map for that journey is Guide to Historic Virginia City.

80 pages, maps, illus.
paper, ISBN 0-917298-56-X, $9.95

Books of related interest available in the Mining section.

Journeys to the Land of Gold: Emigrant Diaries from the Bozeman Trail, 1863-1866

Edited by Susan Badger Doyle

Foreword by Charles E. Rankin

Afterword by Elliott West

Collected here for the first time ever are the surviving eyewitness accounts of the Bozeman's Trail's civilian emigrants: twenty-four diaries written during the journey and nine reminiscences prepared afterward. These accounts describe life on the West's last great emigrant trail, the shortcut from the Platte River Road to the Montana goldfields, from 1863 until 1866, when the route was closed by "Red Cloud's War." Ample introductions, extensive annotation, historical illustrations, and detailed maps enrich this oversized, two-volume compendium.

64 pages, illus., maps
Two-volume, boxed set
cloth, ISBN 0-917298-48-9, $95.00

Perilous Passage: A Narrative of the Montana Gold Rush, 1862-1863

by Edwin R. Purple

Edited by Kenneth N. Owens

In 1862 Edwin Ruthven Purple seized the chance to strike it rich in the newly discovered goldfields of the northern Rocky Mountains. With an introduction and thorough annotations by Kenneth N. Owens, Perilous Passage offers Purple's never-before-published, first-person narrative. On hand for the crimes that led to vigilante justice, Purple chronicled the story of a raucous, sometimes murderous life among bonanza miners.

216 pages, illus.
cloth, ISBN 0-917298-35-7, $25.95
paper, ISBN 0-917298-37-3, $15.95

WesternHistory Classics

War of the Copper Kings

by C. B. Glasscock

Greed and corruption, bribery and fraud, insiders getting fabulously rich while workers get robbed. Sound familiar? That was the great battle for Butte, Montana, at the dawn of the twentieth century when it was the richest hill on earth. Copper was the treasure, eagerly sought after for wiring the modern world, and the hard rock below Butte was riddled with veins of the precious metal. At the time, Butte was the largest city between Minneapolis and Portland, and it was a wide-open town, only recently born in the rugged Rocky Mountains. Illustrated by rare, historical photographs, The War of the Copper Kings tells the story of Butte and the copper kings, a story of raw human drama and timeless historical significance.

This edition features an index, the first ever compiled for The War of the Copper Kings.

Copublished with Riverbend Publishing

304 pages, illus.
paper, ISBN 1-931832-21-8, $19.95

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