Americas' Historic Trails Book

"Hi, this is Tom Bodett. Twenty years ago my curious nature brought me to new frontiers. Now I'm heading out to track the journeys of earlier Americans who followed their own curious natures, on America's Historic Trails."

So begins the delightful public television series, America's Historic Trails with Tom Bodett. The series and this book lead viewers and readers down half-remembered byways in the American past that are still surprisingly reachable today.

Americans have been setting out to explore new territory since before our country was born. The lure of the frontier, the urge to see what's out there, has been a defining national characteristic for more than 400 years. The new public television series America's Historic Trails with Tom Bodett traces the paths taken by succeeding waves of pioneers and settlers, visionaries and adventurers as they pushed across the continent to claim what became these United States. Quakers and Mormons seeking religious freedom...Union and Confederate soldiers... homesteaders looking for more land in untamed Kentucky or Oregon...gold seekers in 1598, and in 1898: all left their stories and their marks on the American landscape. These colorful characters, their struggles and triumphs, are recalled in this richly told history--the companion book.

This guide follows the trails taken by Spanish soldiers marching north from Mexico in their fruitless 16th-century quest for the fabled "seven cities gold"...by patriots riding to the trumpet call of freedom at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia...by Daniel Boone trekking into rugged and still wild Kentucky, by courageous slaves escaping via the Underground Railway...by adventurers and fortune seekers drawn by gold fever to California and Alaska.

The brave and the lost, the ill-fated and the blessed, all left their marks on the American landscape and their stories on the American panorama. Now you can follow their paths.