Breaking the Wilderness: The Story of the Conquest of the Far West, from the Wanderings of Cabeza De Vaca, to the First Descent of the Colorado by Powell, and the Completion of the Union Pacific Railway, with Particular Account of the Exploits of Trappers and Traders

In 1905, a painter and explorer sat down to tell the full story of how America became America. The result is a sweeping, vivid account that begins with the shattered survivors of a Spanish expedition stumbling through Texas in the 1520s and ends with the last spike of the Union Pacific Railway driving the frontier into history. Between those bookends lies a continent's worth of drama: Zebulon Pike smuggling maps out of Santa Fe, fur traders descending the Green River with beaver pelts worth fortunes, John Wesley Powell's legendary first descent through the Grand Canyon in a quartet of wooden boats. Dellenbaugh, who knew many of these men personally, writes with the authority of someone who had walked the same ground. He gives us the trappers and traders, the mountain men and missionaries, the soldiers and scouts who carved pathways through a wilderness so vast it took centuries to comprehend. The prose crackles with the particular energy of a man who believed the age of American exploration was not just history, but a vanishing miracle worth documenting before it disappeared entirely. For anyone who has ever wondered how the West was won, and what it cost.