Books

  • Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West

  • There is also no book for Jedediah Smith’s Trails available, which describes his trails as diary. But this book is the best choice if you try to follow his trails. Like a lot of these hunters and mountain men Jedediah also kept not a diary for all his trails, so quite a few travels are just guesses.

  • The Natural History of The Long Expedition to the Rocky Mountains

  • This book describes best the Stephen H. Long Trail. Unfortunately it’s not written like a diary, which makes the mapping of the trail more difficult. But you get a lot of background knowledge and learn a lot about nature.

  • The Discovery of the Oregon Trail

  • This book describes the Wilson Price Hunt Trail to the West as well as the Robert Stuart Trail to the East by the diaries of the two explorers.

  • John Colter — His Years in the Rockies

  • Unfortunately there are no records of John Colter's Trail through the Yellowstone area. But this book shows the most probable route based on all gatherable historical facts.

  • The Expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery Pike (Vol. 1+2)
  • It’s more a diary than a book, but with all the footnotes from Elliott Coues it’s a perfect guide for following the trail today. But all the annotations have been made in 1895 so it’s still a lot of work to prepare the trail for today.
  • National Geographics Guide to the Lewis & Clark Trail
  • A must read for everyone who wants to follow the footsteps of Lewis & Clark. Excellent way description to find nowadays all the historical places Lewis & Clark have been.
  • Atlas of Westward Expension
  • A very good description of the US history from 1750 to 1917 — this is the book, where all my travels have started with....