The Oregon Trail : a new American journey

Resource Information

The work The Oregon Trail : a new American journey represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Austin Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

The Oregon Trail : a new American journey

Title remainder

a new American journey

Statement of responsibility

Rinker Buck

Creator

• trueBuck, Rinker, 1950-

Author

• trueBuck, Rinker, 1950-

Subject

• Frontier and pioneer life
• trueFrontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.)
• Large type books
• Large type books
• trueOregon National Historic Trail
• Travel
• United States -- Oregon National Historic Trail
• United States, West
• Buck, Rinker, 1950-
• Buck, Rinker, 1950- -- Travel -- Oregon National Historic Trail

Genre

• Large type books

Language

eng

Summary

Spanning 2,000 miles and traversing six states from Missouri to the Pacific Ocean, the Oregon Trail is the route that made America. In the fifteen years before the Civil War, when 400,000 pioneers used it to emigrate West, the trail united the coasts, doubled the size of the country, and laid the groundwork for the railroads. The trail years also solidified the American character: our plucky determination in the face of adversity, our impetuous cycle of financial bubbles and busts, the fractious clash of ethnic populations competing for the same jobs and space. At once an American journey, a work of history, and a personal saga, this book tells the story of Buck's 2,000-mile expedition across the plains. He was accompanied by three cantankerous mules, his boisterous brother, Nick, and an "incurably filthy" Jack Russell terrier named Olive Oyl. Along the way, Buck dodges thunderstorms in Nebraska, chases his runaway mules across miles of Wyoming plains, scouts more than five hundred miles of nearly vanished trail on foot, crosses the Rockies, makes desperate fifty-mile forced marches for water, and repairs so many broken wheels and axels that he nearly reinvents the art of wagon travel itself. Apart from charting his own geographical and emotional adventure, Buck introduces readers to the evangelists, shysters, natives, trailblazers, and everyday dreamers who were among the first of the pioneers to make the journey west

Member of

• Thorndike Press large print popular and narrative nonfiction

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

978

Illustrations

• illustrations
• maps

Index

no index present

Literary form

non fiction

Series statement

Thorndike Press large print popular and narrative nonfiction