Horses came to America from Spain, England, the Low Countries, and Arabia. Here they interbred and flourished as never before. "Out of the melting pot have come four entirely new breeds that rank among the finest horses of the world. Three of them originated through the painstaking and intelligent efforts of American horsemen, one through a freak of nature."That "freak" was a little bay stallion born when George Washington was president. This chunky, short-legged horse proved to be not only hardy and gentle but also able to outpull and outrun any other horse in New England or New York....
Horses came to America from Spain, England, the Low Countries, and Arabia. Here they interbred and flourished as never before. "Out of the melting pot...
Henry Wells (1805-78) and William Fargo (1818-81) first worked together when they broke the Post Office monopoly on mail service along the Erie Canal in the 1840s. In 1852 they incorporated Wells, Fargo & Company and went into the express business in California, carrying gold, letters, packages, and freight between the mining regions and the financial centers of the East. They registered the miners to receive deliveries, guarded the gold-dust shipments, apprehended stage robbers, recovered stolen gold and silver, and established a reliable, conservative banking house in the world's wickedest...
Henry Wells (1805-78) and William Fargo (1818-81) first worked together when they broke the Post Office monopoly on mail service along the Erie Canal ...
In 1826 an undersized sixteen-year-old apprentice ran away from a saddle maker in Franklin, Missouri, to join one of the first wagon trains crossing the prairie on the Santa Fe Trail. Kit Carson (1809 68) wanted to be a mountain man, and he spent his next sixteen years learning the paths of the West, the ways of its Native inhabitants, and the habits of the beaver, becoming the most successful and respected fur trapper of his time.From 1842 to 1848 he guided John C. Fremont s mapping expeditions through the Rockies and was instrumental in the U.S. military conquest of California during the...
In 1826 an undersized sixteen-year-old apprentice ran away from a saddle maker in Franklin, Missouri, to join one of the first wagon trains crossing t...
Prior to the Civil War, the fastest mail between the West Coast and the East took almost thirty days by stagecoach along a southern route through Texas. Some Californians feared their state would not remain in the Union, separated so far from the free states. Then businessman William Russell invested in a way to deliver mail between San Francisco and the farthest western railroad, in Saint Joseph, Missouri-across two thousand miles of mountains, deserts, and plains-guaranteed in ten days or less. Russell hired eighty of the best and bravest riders, bought four hundred of the fastest and...
Prior to the Civil War, the fastest mail between the West Coast and the East took almost thirty days by stagecoach along a southern route through Texa...