San Antonio College Library

Riding Astride is a study of the women of the frontier West whose extreme and sometimes even militant behavior helped break down the strict social codes of the nineteenth century and transform American culture. Historian Patricia Riley Dunlap discards the glamorized, romanticized wild and woolly West found in other portrayals, revealing the reality of the lives of frontier women. These women branded cattle, mined for gold and silver, farmed, ranched,...

This film presents a portrait of the man who made the American West into the American story. For most Americans in the mid-1800s, the Wild West existed only in dime novels, but a young man from Kansas who had roamed the prairies in the war with the Plains Indians came to embody the picaresque frontier hero. As the frontier was rapidly disappearing, he realized he could market his life as entertainment, and millions around the world would pay for a...

A book about women of every kind and sort, from nuns to prostitutes, who participated in the greatest American adventure -- pioneering across the continent. Not only does the material represent half-forgotten history -- which the author garnered from attics, libraries, state historical museums, and the reminiscences of Far Western Old-timers-- -- ut it is unique in presenting the woman's side of the story in this major American experience. With dramatic...

In all the sagas of human migration, few can top the drama of the journey by midwestern farmers to Oregon and California in the years 1840-49. Seeking the promised land, these travelers trekked two thousand miles by covered wagon from Missouri to their destinations on the Pacific coast. Although they used mountain men as guides, they went almost literally into the unknown, braving dangers from hunger, thirst, disease, drowning, and Native Americans....

In 1849 news of the discovery of gold in California triggered an enormous wave of emigration toward the Pacific. Lured by the promise of riches, thousands of settlers left behind the forests, rain, and fertile soil of the eastern United States in favor of the rough-hewn lands of the American West. The dramatic terrain they struggled to cross is so familiar to us now that it is hard to imagine how frightening--even godforsaken--its sheer rock faces...

THESE ARE SHOOT - OUTS AND SHOWDOWNS THAT GAVE WILD WEST ITS NAME ... RECOUNTED HERE WITH GRITTY ACCURACY, COLORFULDETAIL, AND ALL THE DRAMA OF LIFE - AND DEATH - ON THE FRONTIER.

A collection of vintage essays and rarely seen journal entries detailing the clothes worn by settlers of the early American West.

This survey of frontier history traces the story from the first Columbian contacts between Indians and Europeans to the multicultural encounters of the modern world.

In this book frontier women gain a voice they never had. Professor Myers uses extensive new material by and about women--letters, journals, and reminiscences from over 400 collections--to study the impact of the frontier on women's lives and the role of women in the West. She offers a major reinterpretation of the experience of pioneer women, including that of Indian, Mexican, French, black, and Anglo-American women. Her account re-creates in detail...