Letters of a Woman Homesteader
by Elinore Pruitt Stewart
from Mariner Books
"Peopled with the kinds of characters most novelists only dream of"(Christian Science Monitor), this classic account of American frontier living captures the rambunctious spirit of a pioneer who set out in 1909 to prove that a woman could ranch. Stewart's captivating missives from her homestead in Wyoming bring to full life the beauty, isolation, and joys of working the prairie.
Travels in the Greater Yellowstone
by Jack Turner
from Thomas Dunne Books
Award-winning nature writer Jack Turner directs his attention to one of America’s greatest natural treasures: the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Comprised of two national parks, three national wildlife refuges, parts of six national forests, and eleven wilderness areas, Greater Yellowstone is a vast array of differing environments and geographies.
In a series of essays, Turner explores this wonderland, venturing on twelve separate trips in all seasons using various modes of travel: hiking, climbing, skiing, canoeing lakes, floating rivers, and driving his way across the landscape. He treks down the Teton Range, picks up the Oregon Trail in the Red Desert, and floats the South Fork of the Snake River. Along the way he encounters a variety of wildlife: moose, elk, trout, and wolves. From the treacherous mountains in the dead of winter, to lush river valleys in the height of fishing season, his words and steps trace one of the most American of experiences---exploring the West.
Turner, who has lived in Grand Teton for three decades, designates Greater Yellowstone as ground zero for the country’s conflict between preservation and development. At a time when the battle to preserve a wild and natural environment is relentless, his accounts of the areas conflicts with alien species, logging, real estate, oil, and gas development are alarming.
A mixture of adventure, nostalgia, and Americana, Turner’s rare experiences and evocative writing transform the sights and sounds of Greater Yellowstone into an intimate narrative of travel through America’s most beloved lands.
Praise for Teewinot:
"Bursting with a sense of place...a rewarding reading experience replete with ravishing observations of nature."
- Publishers Weekly
"...a measured luxuriance in the landscape, a love song to the natural history of a place...Turner's writing is muscular, never swaggering, and almost lyrical, summoning a Teton Range in its rightful, sublime austerity."
- Kirkus Reviews
"Teewinot is a rare book. The wonderful accounts of mountaineering serve as armature not only for Turner's meditative reverence for the Grand Tetons and his often evocative prose but also for an uncommon density of knowledge of place..."
- Peter Matthiessen, author of Tigers in the Snow
"This is, simply stated, a wonderful and utterly engaging book."
- Jim Harrison, author of Dalva and The Road Home
"Each place must find its muse. The Tetons have found theirs and his name is Jack Turner."
- Terry Tempest Williams, author of Coyote's Canyon
I See by Your Outfit: Historic Cowboy Gear of the Northern Plains
by Tom Lindmier
from High Plains Press
Give Me Eighty Men: Women and the Myth of the Fetterman Fight (Women in the West)
by Shannon D. Smith
from University of Nebraska Press
The White Indian Boy: and its sequel The Return of the White Indian Boy
by Elijah Nicholas Wilson
from University of Utah Press
The Johnson County War
by Bill O'Neal
from Eakin Press
Select Peaks of Greater Yellowstone: A Mountaineering History & Guide
by Thomas Turiano
from Indomitus Books
A mountaineering and history guide to the 107 highest, most beautiful, most interesting peaks in Yellowstone National Park. Full color!
Letters of a Woman Homesteader (Dover Books on Americana)
by Elinore Pruitt Stewart
from Dover Publications
Pulling Leather: Being the Early Recollections of a Cowboy on the Wyoming Range, 1884-1889
by Reuben B. Mullins
from High Plains Press
Along the Ramparts of the Tetons: The Saga of Jackson Hole, Wyoming
by Robert B. Betts
from University Press of Colorado
The magnificent valley of Jackson Hole at the base of the soaring Teton Range has long been a stage on which a remarkable series of events has been acted out by an equally remarkable cast of characters. This is that story, told with a verve and excitement which brings the past alive.
In these pages, the reader will witness the dramatic creation of the Tetons; the arrival of the first humans, bands of fur-clad Early Hunters who ventured into the valley some 10,000 years ago; the coming and going of the later Indian tribes; and the nearly incredible journey of John Colter, who back in 1807 is said to have been the first white man to have found his way through the wilderness and into Jackson Hole.
Here, too, the reader will meet the boisterous mountain men, trappers such as Jim Bridger and the former slave, Jim Beckwourth, who roamed the Rockies when St. Louis was still a frontier village; a little Mormon boy who ran away from home and lived with the Indians before becoming a Pony Express rider; a most unusual Englishman who describes a terrible tragedy that befell his Indian wife and half-breed children; a glory-seeking lieutenant who led six cavalrymen on a foolhardy expedition that almost cost them their lives; and a nineteenth-century president of the United States who took a pack trip through Jackson Hole, allegedly leaving a trail of empty bottles behind.
And there is more, much more--the story of the pioneers, those hardy few who dared to settle in this high and inhospitable land; the story of outlaws, a shoot-out, vigilance committees and an Indian "massacre" that embarrassed the New York Times; the story of the deliverance of the world's largest elk herd from the many perils that threatened it with extinction; and, finally, the story of the long and angry controversy over the preservation of the Tetons and Jackson Hole as a national park, a struggle called "one of the most remarkable conservation fights of the twentieth century."
All these and still other episodes in the long and colorful cavalcade of Jackson Hole are woven together to form a work of Western Americana of which Dr. Gene Gressley, Director of the West History Research Center at the University of Wyoming, has said, "The literary style is magnificent, the research deep and the organization a model for all would-be historians." Rich in anecdotes and portraits of delightfully eccentric characters, this is history written in a way to be enjoyed by all.
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