A remarkable curiosity
Subtitle: dispatches from a New York City journalist's 1873 railroad trip across the American West
By: [compiled by] Jerald T. Milanich.
Contributors: Milanich, Jerald T.
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Boulder
Language: eng
Number of pages: 371
ISBN-13: 9780870819261
Subjects: Cummings, Amos J. -- 1841-1902 -- Travel -- West (U.S.); Cummings, Amos J. -- 1841-1902 -- 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 -- 19th century; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel; West (U.S.) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century; West (U.S.) -- History -- 1860-1890; West (U.S.) -- Biography
Genres: Correspondence.; Biography.
Description: "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.