Acknowledgments

Foreword

Tom Bodett

El Camino Real It was the first official trail blazed by Europeans in what is now the United States. Along its length Spanish settlers and Native Americans celebrated the truly first Thanksgiving; a small dog saved the lives of Juan de Onate and his scouts; Pueblo Indians got a short-lived taste of freedom by rising up against Spanish authority; and the United States made its last military push for territorial expansion in the nineteenth century.

The Boston Post Road Three hundred years ago, it was the first route for the organized delivery of mail in the British colonies. A hundred years later, the first president of our new nation followed it as he toured those former colonies. George Washington slept there; Benjamin Franklin marked it with milestones; and the first woman to serve in the American armed forces fought there. By the 1800s, the only sign of royalty on the Post Road was the "Stagecoach King."

The Great Wagon Road Stark contrasts marked this route through the rolling fields and mountains of the mid-Atlantic region. In two centuries--and eight hundred miles--it stretched from a bastion of tolerance to the heart of Civil War South. Over its miles religious outcasts sought new homes, slaves found their way to freedom, and a failed New England businessman predicted a coming national tragedy.

The Wilderness Road It was the first great road to take colonial settlers to the western frontier, and it and the Cumberland Gap are linked forever to Daniel Boone. But centuries before Boone crossed the Appalachians, the route of the Wilderness Road was part of a network of Native American trails. And the first white man to breach the Gap was heading east.

The River Road Before the age of the steamboat, boatmen floated goods down the Mississippi River. To get back home, these river pilots had little choice but to walk. In New Orleans and along the River Road, two worlds collided: Louisiana's genteel genteel French settlers and the whiskey-swilling, hard-living Kaintucks.

The Natchez Trace They called it "the Devil's Backbone"--a 450-mile trail connecting Natchez and Nashville that was plagued by land pirates and swamps. Meriwether Lewis may have explored to the Pacific, but even he didn't escape the Trace. Aaron Burr was arrested on suspicion of treason while traveling it. So why did Franklin Roosevelt help honor this infamous route more than a hundred years later?

The Mormon Trail An angelic visitation led Joseph Smith to found the Latter-day Saints. Earthly persecution drove his flock from town to town, always looking for their promised land. Before they found it, they would endure assassinations, internal dissent, public outrage over polygamy, and more than twelve hundred miles of harsh, overland travel.

The California Trail Those first souls who set off across the Great Plains in the 1840s were a strange mix: mountain men, missionaries, men leaving behind failed pasts, and naive families with no clue as to what lay ahead. What they shared was a vision to travel as far as their will and their strength--and their prairie schooners--would take them.

California's Mission Trail Years before the Declaration of Independence, they came from Baja California--Spanish soldiers and Franciscan priests--to a land first imagined in a centuries-old novel. Under Father Junipero Serra, they established a chain of missions from San Diego to Sonoma, changed the cultural face of California, and even laid the foundation for the state's wine industry.

The Klondike Gold Rush Trail Blind, mindless gold fever: There is no other way to put it. It was America's last great frontier adventure. It drew a hundred thousand people to Alaska and the Yukon along treacherous routes like Dead Horse Trail, turned Seattle into a booming city, and even caused one press agent to believe his own publicity.

Selected Events for Travelers

Bibliography

Producers' Acknowledgments

Credits

Index