Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
This massive annotated bibliography
of all known significant eyewitness accounts of 19th-century central overland
travel fills a conspicuous gap in historical literature, and will greatly accelerate
future research, writing, and collecting in this important phase of western
Americana. Platte River Road Narratives includes not only all identifiable
published overland accounts, but also a far greater number of all identifiable
accounts in manuscript form only. The format for over 2,000 entries allows for
systematic identification of the author, the form of the passage, overland trip
highlights, and Matte's authoritative commentary and evaluation, as well as
identification of the repository of the source material.