LEARNING RESOURCE CENTERS

TRCC home > LRC home > Course-Related  Guides > History of the American West

History of the American West

Instructor Terry Delaney

Table of Contents

| General Reference Materials | Beringia Migration | The Original Colonies | Old Northwest and Old Southwest | Oregon and California Trails | California Gold Rush | Transcontinental Railroad | Farming on the Great Plains | Western Federation of Miners and Butte Copper Federation | Range Cattle Industry on the Great Plains | Conservation Movements of Early 20th Century | Conservation Movements of Late 20th Century | Native American Rebirth in the 1960s and 1970s | Mythical West | Tourism versus Extraction in 1980s and 1990s |

General Reference Materials

Materials available in the Library

• The new encyclopedia of the American West / Howard R. Lamar - M-REFSTACK REF F591.N46 1998
• The world almanac of the American West / John S. Bowman (Ed.) - M-REFSTACK REF F591.W87 1986
• The reader's encyclopedia of the American West / Howard R. Lamar - M-REFSTACK REF F591.R38

Materials available from other libraries

• The American West / Robert V. Hine and John M. Faragher
• It's your misfortune and none of my own / Richard White
• Legacy of conquest: The unbroken past of the American West / Patricia Nelson Limerick
• Oxford history of the American West / Clyde A. Milner
• Westward expansion (6th edition) / Ray A. Billington and Martin Ridge

Back to Table of  Contents

Beringia migration and the Native Americans

Books available in the Library

• Quest for the origins of the first Americans / E. James Dixon - M-STACK LCE E61.D59 1993

• Native Americans: opposing viewpoints / William Dudley (Ed.) - M-STACK LCE E77.2.N37 1998

• People of Chaco: A canyon and its culture / Kendrick Frazier - M-STACK E99.P9F74 1999

Books available from other libraries

• American beginnings: The prehistory and palaeoecology of Beringia / Frederick Hadleigh West (Ed.)

• The Bering Land Bridge / David M. Hopkins (Ed.)

• American eras. Early American civilizations and exploration to 1600 / Gretchen D. Starr-LeBeau

• The Cambridge history of the native peoples of the Americas

• Exploring ancient native America: An archaeological guide / David Hurst Thomas

• Pre-colombian peoples of North America / Maria Cordoba

• Who came first: new clues to prehistoric Americans / Patricia Lauber

• The settlement of the Americas: A new prehistory / Thomas D. Dillehay

• The journey from Eden: The peopling of our world / Brian M. Fagan

• The great journey: The peopling of ancient America / Brian M. Fagan

Videos available from other libraries

• Search for the first Americans / BBC-TV production in association with WGBH Boston

• The native Americans / TBS Productions

• A history of native Americans / InVision Communications

• The ancestors: Early cultures of North America / Jack Leustig

Web sites

• Ancestors in the Americas

• Yokon Beringia Interpretative Centre

• Bering Land Bridge National Preserve

• Arctic Circle: Exploring the Past (University of Connecticut)

• WWW-VL U S History: Native American Bibliography

Back to Table of  Contents

East Coast Frontier History, the Original Colonies

Books available in the Library

• Cultural life of the American colonies, 1607-1763 / Louis B. Wright - M-STACK E162W89

• Empire and interest: the American colonies and the politics of mercantilism / Michael Kammen - M-STACK HC254.5.K35

• Africans become Afro-Americans: selected articles on slavery in the American colonies / Peter C. Hoffer (Ed.) - M-STACK E446.A26 1988

• American colonies, 1492-1750: A study of their political, economic, and social development / Marcus W. Jernegan - M-STACK E188.J56 1959

• Quakers in the American colonies / Rufus M. Jones - M-STACK E184.F89J7

• Colonial background of the American revolution: Four essays in American colonial history / Charles M. Andrews - M-STACK E210.A55

• Colonial period of American history / Charles M. Andrews - M-STACK E188.A5745

• England and the discovery of America, 1481-1620: From the Bristol voyages of the fifteenth century to the Pilgrim settlement at Plymouth; the exploration, exploitation, and trial-and-error colonization of North America by the English - M-STACK E127.Q49

• Blacks in colonial America / Oscar Reiss - M-STACK E185.18.R45 1997

• Cities in the wilderness: The first century of urban life in America, 1625-1742 - M-STACK E191.B75 1955

• Colonial experience - M-STACK E188.H3

• Colonies in transition, 1660-1713 - M-STACK E195.C7

• Law and authority in colonial America - M-STACK JX4027.L3

• Law and people in colonial America / Peter C. Hoffer - M-STACK KF361.H63 1992

• Roots of American civilization: A history of American colonial life - M-STACK E188.N48 1963

• "Unite or die": Intercolony relations, 1690-1763 / Harry M. Ward - M-STACK E195.W37

Books available from other libraries

• Prologue to New England / Henry F. Howe

• Wilderness empire: A narrative / Allan W. Eckert

• English colonization of North America / Louis B. Wright and Elaine W. Fowler (Eds.)

• A view of the constitution of the British colonies in North America and the West Indies, 1783 / Anthony Stokes

• The colonial horizon: America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: Interpretive articles and documentary sources / William H. Goetzmann (Ed.)

• The British Empire in America: Containing the history of the discovery, settlement, progress, and state of the British colonies on the continent and islands of America / John Oldmixon

• Deputies and liberties: The origins of representative government in colonial America / Michael Kammen

• The mind and the spirit of early America: Sources in American history, 1607-1789

• The forming of a nation, 1607-1781 / Joseph A. Ernst

• Colonial America: Essays in politics and social development / Stanley N. Katz

• Colonial America: A compact history / Allan Keller

• The history of the thirteen colonies of North America, 1497-1763 / Reginald W. Jeffrey

• Life in colonial America / Louis B Wright

• This land is your land: The geographic evolution of the United States / Seymour I. Schwartz

• The original thirteen colonies, 1776: Colonial America / Fletcher and Boeselt

• A river running west: The life of John Wesley Powell / Donald Worster

• The dust bowl: The Southern plains in the 1930's / Donald Worster

• North-American cattle-ranching frontiers: Origins, diffusion, and differentiation (Histories of the American frontier) / Terry G. Jordan

• Nature's  metropolis: Chicago and the Great West / William Cronon

• Changes in the land: Indians, colonists, and ecology of New England / William Cronon

• Under an open sky: Rethinking America's Western past / William Cronon (Ed.)

Videos available from other libraries

• America's beginning / Education Media, Inc.

• The diversity of colonial communities, 1700-1750 : Family life and livelihood in the American colonies / Rainbow Educational Media

• The Era of colonization (1585-1763) / Invision Communications, Inc.

• Colonial America: Life in the maturing colonies (1690-1765) / Encyclopedia Britannica Corporation

Web sites

• American History: Colonial America

• Making of America (Cornell University)

• Historical Maps of the United States (University of Texas at Austin)

• Colonial America and the Revolution (Rutgers University)

• WWW-VL U S History: Colonial

Back to Table of Contents

Movement into the Old Northwest and Old Southwest

Books available in the Library

• Pioneers of the Southwest; A chronicle of the dark and bloody ground / Constance Lindsay Skinner - M-STACK F396.S62

• The rise of the West, 1754-1830 / Francis S. Samuel - M-STACK E179.5.P45

• The Old Northwest: Pioneer period, 1815-1840 / R. Carlyle Buley - M-STACK F484.3.B94

• The Old Northwest: A chronicle of the Ohio valley and beyond / Frederick Austin Ogg - M-STACK F479.O34

• Tecumseh / John Sugden - M-STACK E99.S35.S86

• Daniel Boone: The life and legend of an American pioneer / John M. Faragher - M-STACK F454.B66F37 1993

Books available from other libraries

• The winning of the West / Theodore Roosevelt

• The opening of the West / Jack M. Sosin (Ed.)

• Frontiers in conflict: The Old Southwest, 1795-1830 / Thomas D. Clark and John D. W. Guice

• The Dixie frontier: A social history of the Southern frontier from the transmontane beginnings to the Civil War / Everett Dick

• Pioneer days in the early Southwest / Grant Foreman

• A new collection of Thomas Bangs Thorpe's sketches of the Old Southwest / David C. Estes (Ed.)

• Jackson's Way: Andrew Jackson and the people of the western waters / John Buchanan

• The Great Lakes frontier; An epic of the Old Northwest / John A. Caruso

• Chicago and the Old Northwest, 1673-1835: A study of the evolution of the northwest frontier, together with a history of Fort Dearborn / Milo Milton Quaife

• The emerging Midwest: Upland Southerners and the political culture of the Old Northwest, 1787-1861 / Nicole Etcheson

• The Ohio frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720-1830 / R. Douglas Hurt

• Settling the Old Northwest: Changing family and commercial strategies in the early Republic / Kim M. Gruenwald

• History of the discovery of the Northwest / John Nicolet

Web sites

• Questia Western Expansion

• PBS The West

Back to Table of Contents

The emigrant trails to California and Oregon, 1840-1860

Books available in the Library

• The Oregon Trail: Sketches of prairie and Rocky-mountain life / Francis Parkman - M-STACK F592.P284

• The forty-niners: A chronicle of the California trail and El Dorado / Stewart Edward White - M-STACK F865.W4

Books available from other libraries

• The Oregon Trail / Francis Parkman

• America's historic trails / John Thompson

• Warriors and pioneers / T. J. Stiles (Ed.)

• The discovery of the Oregon Trail: Robert Stuart's narratives of his overland trip eastward from Astoria in 1812-13 / Philip Ashton Rollins (Ed.)

• Overland in 1846: Diaries and letters of the California-Oregon Trail / Dale Morgan (Ed.)

• The plains across / John D. Unruh

• Women and men on the overland / John M. Faragher

Videos available from other libraries

• The pioneer spirit: Wagon trains and the Oregon Trail / Fabian-Baber, Inc.

• Expansionism / Invision Communications, Inc.

Web sites

• Questia Western Expansion

• PBS New Perspectives on the West

Back to Table of Contents

California Gold Rush

Books available in the Library

• Sisters of fortune: Being the true story of how three motherless sisters saved their home in New England and raised their younger brother while their father went fortune hunting in the California Gold Rush / Nancy Coffey Heffernan and Ann Page Stecker - F44.K2H44 1993

• Days of gold: The California gold and the American nation / Malcolm J. Rohrbough - M-STACK F865.R655 1998

• The age of gold: The California Gold Rush and the new American dream / H. W. Brands - M-STACK F865.B76 2002

Books available from other libraries

• California history: A topical approach / Gordon Morris Bakken (Ed.)

• Eldorado: The California Gold Rush / Dale L. Walker

• The gold rush / J. D. Lloyd (Ed.)

• The world rushes in: The California Gold Rush experience / J. S. Holliday

Videos available in other libraries

• Gold! / Henninger Productions for the History Channel

Web sites

• PBS - About the Gold Rush

• Oakland Museum of California - The Gold Rush

• CERES - The California Gold Rush

• Museum of the City of San Francisco - The Discovery of Gold in California

• California State Library - Exploring the California Gold Rush

• Eastern Connecticut State University - Electronic Textbook on the California Gold Rush

Back to Table of Contents

Transcontinental railroad and subsequent railroads

Books available in the Library

• A history of travel in America / Seymour Dunbar - M-STACK HE203.D77

• Railroads and regulation, 1877-1916 / Gabriel Kolko - M-STACK HE2710.A2.K6

• Connecticut railroads: An illustrated history / Gregg M. Turner and Melancthon W. Jocobus (Eds.) - M-STACK TF15.T851 1989

• The rail lines of southern New England: A handbook of railroad history / Ronald Dale Karr - HE2771.A11.K373 1995

• American railroad politics, 1914-1920: rates, wages, and efficiency / K. Austin Kerr - M-STACK HE2751.K47

• The railroad builders: A chronicle of the welding of the states / John Moody - M-STACK HE2751.M6

Books available from other libraries

• Nothing like it in the world: The men who built the transcontinental railroad, 1863-1869 / Stephen E. Ambrose

• A great and shining road: The epic story of the transcontinental railroad / John Hoyt Williams

• The first transcontinental railroad: Central Pacific, Union Pacific / John Debo Galloway

• A work of giants: Building the first transcontinental railroad / Wesley Griswold

Videos available from other libraries

• Transcontinental railroad / Jaffe Productions and Hearst Entertainment Television in association with The History Channel

• The way West / Steeplechase Films and Channel Four Television

• History of the American railroads / Kaw Valley Films and Video

• The grandest enterprise under God / Insignia Films and WETA-TV

Web sites

• Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum

• Museum of the City of San Francisco

• PBS - Transcontinental Railroad

• Treasures of Congress - The Transcontinental Railroad

• Union Pacific Railroad

Back to Table of Contents

Farming on the Great Plains

Books available in the Library

• Dust Bawl: The southern plains in the 1930's / Donald Worster - M-STACK F786.W87

Books available from other libraries

• Major problems in American environmental history: Documents and essays / Carolyn Merchant (Ed.)

• The Great Plains: Environment and culture / Brian W. Blouet and Frederick C. Luebke (Eds.)

• Dry farming in the northern Great Plains, 1990-1925 / Mary W. M. Hargreaves

• The Dust Bowl: An agricultural and social history / R. Douglas Hurt

• The Great Plains: Perspectives and prospects / Merlin P. Lawson and Maurice E. Baker (Eds.)

• The Dust Bowl: Men, dirt, and depression / Paul Bonnifield

Videos available from other libraries

• Surviving the Dust Bowl / Steward/Gazit Productions, Inc.

• The River: The plow that broke the Plains

Web sites

• Museum of Westward Expansion

• North American Drought: A Paleo Perspective

• USDA - A History of American Agriculture 1776-1990

• The Northern Great Plains - Hultstrand and Pazandak Photograph Collections

Back to the Table of Contents

Western Federation of Miners and Butte Copper Federation

 Materials available from other libraries

• Race and labor in western copper: The fight for equality, 1896-1918 / Philip J. Mellinger

• Colorado's war on militant unionism: James H. Peabody and the Western Federation of Miners / George G. Suggs, Jr.

• The Rocky Mountain revolution / Stewart H. Holbrook

• The Gibraltar: Socialism and labor in Butte , Montana, 1895-1920 / Jerry W. Calvert

• Butte's memory book / Don James

• Copper camp: Stories of the world's greatest mining town, Butte, Montana

• Mining cultures: Men, women, and leisure in Butte, 1914-41 / Mary Murphy

• Tracing the veins: Of copper, culture, and community from Butte to Chuquicamata / Janet L. Finn

• Hard rock epic / Mark Wyman

• Hard-rock miners / Ron Brown

• Battle for Butte / Michael Malone

• The Butte Irish / David Emmons

 Web sites

• The Western Federation of Miners

• Bill Haywood Trial

Back to the Table of Contents 

Range Cattle Industry on the Great Plains

Materials available from other libraries

• North American cattle-ranching frontiers: Origins, diffusion, and differentation / Terry G. Jordan

• The range cattle industry: Ranching on the Great Plains from 1865 to 1925 / Edward E. Dale

• Great Plains cattle empire: Thatcher Brothers and Associates (1875-1945) / Paul E. Patterson and Joy Poole

• Great American cattle trails: The story of the old cow paths of the East and the longhorn highways of the plains / Harry S. Drago

• Cattle-raising on the Plains of North America / Walter B. Von Richthofen

• Cattle raising on the Plains, 1900-1961 / John T. Schlebecker

• Conquering our great American plains: A historical development / Stuart O. Henry

Web sites

• Development of the National Cattle Trade

• American Frontiers

• Tallgrass Prairie History

Back to the Table of Contents 

Conservation Movements of Early 20th Century

Materials available in the Library

• From conservation to ecology: The development of environmental concern / Carroll W. Pursell - M-STACK HC110.E5P87

Materials available from other libraries

• Conservation and the gospel of efficiency: The progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920 / Samuel P. Hays

• The politics of conservation: Crusades and controversies, 1897-1913 / Elmo R. Richardson

• Federal conservation policy, 1921-1933 / Donald C. Swiss

• Natural resources and the American state, 1900-1940 / Donald J. Pisani

• Taking stock: American government in the twentieth century / Morton Keller and R. Shep Melnick (Eds.)

• The pathless way / Michael Cohen

• John Muir and his legacy / Stephen Fox

• Imperial San Francisco / Judd Kahn

• National parks / Alfred Runte

Web sites

• Evolution of the Conservation Movement

• The Feather Trade

Back to the Table of Contents 

Conservation Movements of Late 20th Century

Materials available from other libraries

• Crossing the next meridian / Charles F. Wilkinson
• Where the buffalo roam / Donald W. Matthews
• Uncommon ground / William Cronon
• Desert Solitaire / Edward W. Abbey
• The natural West: Environmental history of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains / Dan Flores
• Searching for Yellowstone / Paul Schullery
• Wilderness and the American mind / Roderick F. Nash
• Virgin land: The American land as symbol and myth / Henry Nash Smith
• Water for Western agriculture / Kenneth Frederic and James Hanson

Back to the Table of Contents 

Native American Rebirth of 1960s and 1970s

Materials available in the Library

• Native Americans: Opposing viewpoints - M-STACK E77.2.N37 1998

• American Indian history - M-REFSTACK E77.A496 2003

• The earth shall weep: A history of Native America / James Wilson - T-STACK E77.W54 1999

• Indian country: A history of Native people in America / Karen D. Harvey - M-STACK E77.H315 1993

• Native American tribalism: Indian survivals and renewals / D'Arcy McNickle - M-STACK E91.M26

• Killing the White man's Indian: Reinventing Native Americans at the end of the twentieth century / Fergus M. Bordewich - M-STACK E99.T77.B67 1997

Materials available from other libraries

• Like a hurricane: The Indian movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee / Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior

• Blood of the land: The government and corporate war against the American Indian Movement / Rex Weyler

• In the spirit of Crazy Horse / Peter Matthiessen

• Red power: The American Indians' fight for freedom / Alvin Josephy

Web sites

• American Indian Movement

• Minnesota Historical Society - American Indian Movement

Back to the Table of Contents 

Mythical West

Materials available in the Library

• Print the legend: Photography and the American West / Martha A. Sandweiss - M-STACK TR23.6.S25 2002

Materials available from other libraries

• Thomas Moran / Nancy K. Anderson
• The mythic West in the twentieth century / Robert G. Athearn
• William Henry Jackson and the transformation of the American landscape / Peter B. Hales
• Wild West shows and the images of American indians / L. G. Moses
• Discovered lands, invented pasts: Transforming visions of the American West / Jules D. Prown
• The cowboy hero / William W. Savage
• Virgin land / Henry Nash Smith
• Inventing Billy the Kid / Stephen Tatum
• The filming of the West / Jon Tuska
• The Eastern establishment and the Western experience / G. Edward White
• Print the legend: The life and times of John Ford  / Scott Eyman

Back to the Table of Contents 

Tourism versus Extraction in the 1980s and 1990s

Materials available in the Library

• Social costs, economic development, and environmental disruption / William K. Kapp - M-STACK HD75.6.K37 1983
• Nature's last strongholds / Robert Burton (Ed.) - M-STACK QH75.N3559 1991
• Adventures in conservation / T. A. Roberts - M-STACK SK354.R63.A33
• Conservation: Now or never / Nicholas Roosevelt - M-STACK HC110.E5S87 1998
• Sustainable America: America's environment, economy, and society in the 21st century / Dan Sitarz - M-STACK HC110.E5S87 1998
• Environmental geology: conservation, land-use planning, and resource management / Peter T. Flawn - M-STACK QE33.F5
• Global resources: Opposing viewpoints - M-REFSTACK REF E169.1.A494 1991 GL
• Economics and the environment / Eban S. Goodstein - M-STACK HD75.6.G66 1995
• The life of the mountains / Maurice Brooks - M-STACK QH541.5.M65B7

Materials available from other libraries

• Crossing the next meridian / Charles Wilkerson
• An unsettled country / Donald Worster
• Where the buffalo roams / Anne Matthews
• Return of the wolf to Yellowstone / Thomas McNamee
• Energy, economic growth, and regionalism / Lynton R. Hayes
• Beauty, health, and permanence / Samuel P. Hays
• Preserving nature in the National Parks / Richard W. Sellars
• The Trans-Alaska pipeline controversy / Peter A. Coates
• Crimes against Nature / Karl Jacoby
• The hunter's game / Louis Warren
• Quest for the golden circle / Arthur Gomez
• Let people judge: Wise use and the private property rights movement / John D. Echeverria and Raymond Booth Eby (Eds.)
• Federal land, western anger: The Sagebrush Rebellion and environmental politics / R. McGreggor Cawley
• Sagebrush Rebellion: Impacts on energy and minerals

Web sites

• Rural Development Perspectives
• Forest History Society

Back to the Table of Contents 

Please send comments, suggestions, or inquiries to Mildred Hodge.

Last updated: 07/27/06 © Copyright 2003, Three Rivers Community College. All rights reserved.