The Wild West on 5 Bits a Day (Traveling on 5)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0500288720 ISBN 13: 9780500288726

Publisher: Thames & Hudson, 2010

Board a stagecoach, meet Wyatt Earp, and raise the roof in a cow-town saloon―your guide to traveling, eating, drinking, and surviving in frontier America.

Enjoy time-travel through the Old West . . . and enter a world of cowboys, Indians, and cavalry officers, legendary lawmen and gunslingers, gamblers, working girls with hearts of gold, and pioneers building a life on the frontier.

The time is 1880. Railroad travel to California is relatively easy, and you can ride a spur line to towns like Santa Fe, but getting to many places in the mountains and plains calls for a sense of adventure. Cowboys drive huge herds of cattle from Texas ranches to raucous Kansas railheads. The Earps and Doc Holliday are in Tombstone; Jesse James and Billy the Kid are still at large. Booming Leadville has just opened its famous opera house, while Virginia City reigns as Queen of the Comstock.

This rollicking guide to the Wild West draws on contemporary newspapers, memoirs, diaries, dime novels, and guidebooks as it invites you to . . .

• explore on horseback, by stagecoach, and in locomotives;
• visit Dodge City, Deadwood, Fort Laramie, and other “must-see” locales;
• witness gunfights and cattle roundups;
• don a special “Yosemite suit” and ride out to marvel at the giant redwoods and dazzling rock formations.

Complete with practical advice on where to stay, what to wear, and what to safely eat, here is the perfect introduction to the exciting days before the West was tamed. 15 color and 65 black-and-white illustrations

About the Author:

Joan Tapper was the founding editor of National Geographic Traveler and editor of Islands Magazine and the author of The Most Beautiful Villages and Towns of California, The Most Beautiful Villages and Towns of the Southwest, The Most Beautiful Villages and Towns of the Pacific Northwest, and The Wild West on 5 Bits a Day. She lives in California.