When first opened to traffic in 1821, the Santa Fe Trail linked the American markets along the Missouri River with the long-established Mexican...
Following the Santa Fe Trail
read more
Candy Moulton
A Pathfinder’s Trail
Thousands of overland immigrants to Oregon and California from 1845 to 1849 followed a path first blazed by John C. Fremont. After Congress named...
Bicycling the Oregon Trail
Tens of thousands of people organized at Independence Square in Independence,...
Custer & Cody Country
You’re Riding Shotgun With… Candy Moulton, a fourth-generation Westerner, who was reared on the Wyoming ranch her grandparents...
Conflict on the Range
You wouldn’t know it today when you drive across Colorado and Wyoming, seeing cattle grazing with sheep herds nearby, that a century ago such...
Oregon Trail Endangered
I have spent years traveling overland trails in the West; some might say I have an obsession for traveling three miles an hour in a covered wagon....
Forts of the Northern Plains
I have a hankering to put some more miles on my car, so I fill my gas tank and head west to visit some of the forts established in the Intermountain...
Following Dinosaur Tracks in the West
“Daddy, Daddy! Look! There are dinosaurs!” I could not keep myself from grinning when the little boy raced into the museum gallery in Bozeman,...
Riches for Chinese Miners
Chinese laborers played a prominent role in the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad, and they were equally instrumental in mining...
Trailing Alfred Jacob Miller in the West
Alfred Jacob Miller was 27 years old when Scotsman Capt. William Drummond Stewart visited his Baltimore studio in 1837. Stewart thought his upcoming...
Dreams of Gold on the Starvation Trail
Gold seekers intent on finding the quickest ways to the Colorado gold fields forged the Smoky Hill Trail, but many of them paid a terrible price in...
Ranch Style on a Budget
Jodi Finkenbinder did not just imagine what her new home could be, but she actually rolled up her shirt sleeves and helped create it. Starting with...