This site begins, "In 1800, the American West was still wild country--no cities, no railroads and no cattle ranches yet existed. It was quiet and untouched. People in the eastern U.S. had heard stories about the western mountains and the desert, but no Euro-American had been there. Within a very short time that would all change." Lewis and Clark, The Astorians, Pike and Long, and others are described in this web site.
Written by Mary Lee Spence for the Utah History Encyclopedia, this site provides another point of view into John Charles Fremont's expeditions and exploits.
According to this National Wildlife Foundation web site, John Wesley Powell led explorations of the Colorado River that resulted in land use reform laws in the United States.
The official web site of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Celebration. Includes information about the exhibitions and celebrations around the country, as well as the announcement by the President of the United States designating 2003-2006 as the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial.
Created to commemorate the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial, this site was created by the Lewis and Clark Historic Landscape Project at the University of Missouri and the Missouri State Archives. It features the Lewis and Clark journals and early Missouri land surveys.
Meeting of Frontiers is the Library of Congress's bilingual, multimedia English-Russian digital library that tells the story of the American exploration and settlement of the West, the parallel exploration and settlement of Siberia and the Russian Far East, and the meeting of the Russian-American frontier in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest.
Created by the Historical Collections and Services staff at the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library at the University of Virginia, this site covers the medical aspects of trekking across uncharted territory.
Described as the "greatest real estate deal in history", the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 added 13 states to the United States of America. The National Archives holds the copies of the treaties signed by Napoleon Bonaparte.
Fearing the true live of the cowboy would be lost, Erwin Smith resolved to honor this tradition by presenting as true a portrayal as possible. Working as a cowhand on Texas ranches, and attending two of the best art schools in the country at Chicago and Boston, Smith honed the skills needed to capture the essence of ranch life with photography. Between 1905 and 1912, he photographed roundups in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. His photographs, showing both the romance and hardship of cowboy life, are some of the best-known images of the southwestern range early in the last century.
Based on exhibitions at the New York Public Library, these two sites discuss the mapping of the western territories and performing artists in those territories, respectively.
This site comprises 253 published narratives by Americans and foreign visitors recounting their travels in the colonies and the United States and their observations and opinions about American peoples, places, and society from about 1750 to 1920. The narratives range from the unjustly neglected to the justly famous, and from classics of the genre to undiscovered gems.
Celebrating the signing of the Louisiana Purchase by Thomas Jefferson and Napoleon Bonaparte in 1803, Louisiana offers documents, exhibits, concerts, films, re-enactments, and more.
The Avalon Project at Yale Law School compiled this site of documents and treaties related to the land purchase from France in 1803 that nearly doubled the size of the United States.
NARA's Teaching with Documents lesson plan includes documents and photographs on the Alaska Purchase Treaty, the Gold Rush, Homesteading, and Statehood.
From the Oregon Trail History Library, part of the Oregon Trail Foundation, this site offers insight into the lives of pioneers who crossed the country in wagon trains.