The Oregon Trail is the gripping account of Francis Parkman's journey west across North America in 1846. After crossing the Allegheny Mountains by coach and continuing by boat and wagon to Westport, Missouri, he set out with three companions on a horseback journey that would ultimately take him over two thousand miles. His detailed description of the journey, set against the vast majesty of the Great Plains, has emerged through the generations as...

Describes the lives of the beaver trappers who were the first explorers of the American West beyond the Rocky Mountains, and some of the tall tales that made them legends.

Mr. Bird presents ten Western tall tales that he has heard throughout his life, some of them his own.

Little Britches becomes the "man" in his family after his father's early death, taking on the concomitant responsibilities as well as opportunities. During the summer of his twelfth year he works on a cattle ranch in the shadow of Pike's Peak, earning a dollar a day. Little Britches is tested against seasoned cowboys on the range and in the corral. He drives cattle through a dust storm, eats his weight in flapjacks, and falls in love with a blue outlaw...

William Bonney, a.k.a. “Billy the Kid,” killed his first man when he was twelve. By the time he was twenty-one he had, by his own reckoning, slain nineteen more. In the intervening years he had become “Billy the Kid,” bloodthirsty ogre and outlaw saint. Drawing on contemporary accounts, period photographs, dime novels and his own fund of empathy and imagination, Michael Ondaatje traces Billy's passage across the blasted landscape of 1880 New...