The Code of The West and The All American Cowboy

Mention the Wild West and you get visions of Clint Eastwood in “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” or Gene Autry and Yul Brynner, and Charles Bronson in the “Magnificent Seven”. However, perhaps even more than that, it was Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane and other similarly colorful characters that became famous because…

First Transcontinental Railroad – From East to West and Back Again

Expansion of the western part of the United States was quicker and easier after the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad, also known as the Pacific Railroad or The Overland Route. This was the first continuous railroad to stretch coast-to-coast for 1,912 miles, connecting the eastern US Rail Network at Omaha, with the Pacific Coast…

The Trail of Tears – A Journey Resulting in Loss and Heartache

As the USA expanded, many white settlers believed that they were entitled to the land that Native Americans had farmed and hunted for hundreds of years in Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, Alabama and North Carolina. At the beginning of the 1830's there were approximately 125,000 Native Americans living in these states, but by the end of…

Daniel Boone – American Pioneer and Explorer

Daniel Boone is one of America’s most celebrated pioneers, who spent many years exploring and settling the American frontier. He was of English and Welsh Quaker ancestry, and his parents had moved to the United States because of religious persecution. Boone was born on November 2, 1734 and left the Quaker settlement in his youth,…

The Mississippi River

One of the world’s most important commercial waterways, the Mississippi River is the second longest river in North America. It passes through, or borders, the states of Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. The word ‘Mississippi’ originates from the French misi-ziibi, meaning Great River. The river’s source can be found at…