Title: A remarkable curiosity : dispatches from a New York City journalist's 1873 railroad trip across the American West /
Authors: Cummings, Amos J. 1841-1902.; Milanich, Jerald T.
Publisher: University Press of Colorado,
Year: 2008
Subjects: Cummings, Amos J. Travel West (U.S.); Cummings, Amos J. Correspondence.; Frontier and pioneer life West (U.S.); Natural history West (U.S.); Journalists New York (State) New York Biography; Railroad travel West (U.S.) History; West (U.S.) Description and travel.; West (U.S.) Social life and customs; West (U.S.) History; West (U.S.) Biography.
Abstract: "In 1873, Amos Jay Cummings, a decorated Civil War veteran and journalist for the New York Sun newspaper, set out on a westward journey aboard the newly completed transcontinental railroad. For some time, miners, settlers, and entrepreneurs had already been heading west to make their fortunes, and Cummings made the trip in part to see what all the fuss was about. During his six-month expedition from Kansas to California, Cummings sent extraordinary and engaging accounts of the American West back to his readers in New York." "Collected in this volume for the first time are Cummings's portraits of a land and its assortment of characters unlike anything back East. Characters like Pedro Armijo, the New Mexican sheep tycoon who took Denver by storm, and more prominently the Mormon prophet Brigham Young and one of his wives, Ann Eliza Young, who was filing for divorce at the time of Cummings's arrival."--BOOK JACKET.
Contents: Over the Kansas plains -- The earthly paradise -- A Canadian in Colorado -- The Petrified stumps -- The town in the desert -- The fate of a gold seeker -- In the golden gulches -- The story of little Emma -- The seventeenth wife -- The great Utah divorce -- An interesting conversation with Ann Eliza Young -- The prophet's divorce -- The Arizona expedition -- The Mormon pioneers -- The American Dead Sea -- Mutton chops by the million -- The king of the jack rabbits -- The funeral postponed -- Duel with six-shooters.