With 52 color illustrations and 280 historical photographs

In The American Frontier, historian William C. Davis masterfully chronicles the history of the territory beyond the Mississippi, with particular attention to exploration, expansion, conflict, and settlement. In 1804 the frontier of the "West of opportunity" was St. Louis, from which Lewis and Clark set out on their journey of discovery. Their first bold steps provided the key to the greatest adventure of them all, inspiring the emergence of a nation in a momentous century of migration and settlement.

Attention turned to the Southwest after Mexico broke free of Spain in 1821. In the next two decades both Texas and California fought to be free of Mexican rule, receiving recognition as republics in their own right. These years also saw the slow spread westward, marked by the Mormons in Utah, the '49ers in California, and the development of stage routes, railways, and other overland trails. Butterfield, Wells Fargo, and Pony Express are names redolent of this age.

With the end of the Civil War, in 1865, people of all nations and tongues spread to the West. The story Davis tells is above all one of land and people: the vast plains between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains; the pioneers, trappers, entrepreneurs, buffalo hunters, miners, soldiers, gamblers, cowboys, lawmen, gunfighters -- people prepared to fight hostile elements to create a place for themselves; and the Indians of the Great Plains, whose land was usurped and who ultimately would be displaced.

The American Frontier portrays their lives through artifacts from the collections of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming. Gathered and displayedfor the first time in more than thirty outstanding color spreads, they provide a timely, memorable evocation of frontier America, showing both the legend and the reality of the West as it has never been seen before.