Washoe County Library System

Travel alongside pioneers as they cross the vast plains, deserts, and mountains of North America. Explore the routes the settlers took, experience daily life in a wagon train, and discover the dangers that families faced on the trails.

Uncharted Territory In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana territory from the French for $15,000,000. The purchase made President Jefferson's dream of extending the U.S. west of the Mississippi River come true. Now the much larger United States had difficult questions to answer: How would Louisiana be governed? How would it be divided into states? Would those states be free states or slave states? What would happen to the Native Americans?...

"Describes the causes of and effects of the Louisiana Purchase on US history"--Provided by publisher.

Traces the lives of 10 Americans who played significant roles in the country's westward expansion.

The rise and fall of ancient Rome has been on American minds from the beginning of our Republic. Depending on who's doing the talking, the history of Rome serves either as a triumphal call to action, or a dire warming of imminent collapse. Esteemed editor and author Murphy ventures past the pundits' rhetoric to draw nuanced lessons about how we might avoid Rome's demise. Working on a canvas that extends far beyond the issue of an overstretched military,...

"From a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, the powerful story of a fragile nation as it expands across a contested continent. In this beautifully written history of America's formative period, a preeminent historian upends the traditional story of a young nation confidently marching to its continent-spanning destiny. The newly constituted United States actually emerged as a fragile, internally divided union of states contending still with European...

Explores period frontier life and contradictory accounts in an effort to discern the true story of a 19th-century bear-mauling victim who pursued vengeance against the companions who left him for dead.

Explores the time in United States history when western territory was being explored, settled, and turned into states, including the impact this expansion had on native peoples.