Seventy Years on the Frontier

Nothing of very great note occurred in the county of Jackson, after the cyclone of 1826, until the year 1830, when five Mormon elders made their appearance in the county and com...

My father, being one of the very first pioneers of Jackson County, Missouri, abundant opportunity was afforded me to become acquainted with the habits of wild animals of every d...

It is a mistake to believe that, because Colorado has a high elevation, the mercury in the thermometer drops down below zero in the winter season and stops there, and that the s...

Everything worked along smoothly on my westward way, after my adventure with the Indians, until I reached Walnut Creek, at the Big Bend of the Arkansas River. At that point the...

During the early days of Carson's childhood his father moved from Kentucky to Missouri, which State was then called Upper Louisiana, where Kit Carson passed a number of years, e...

During the winter of 1859, Mr. W. H. Russell, of our firm, while in Washington, D. C., met and became acquainted with Senator Gwin of California. The Senator was very anxious to...

In the summer of 1827 my father, Benjamin Majors, with twenty-four other men, formed a party to go to the Rocky Mountains in search of a silver mine that had been discovered by...

In 1858 the Pike's Peak gold excitement caused a rush from the East to Colorado, and a camp was pitched at the junction of Cherry Creek and the Platte. From this small beginning...

While dwelling upon the scenes and incidents of my life upon the frontier, and speaking of those with whom I came in contact, I wish to refer to one whose meeting with me toward...

In the early part of June, 1850, I loaded my train, consisting of ten wagons drawn by 130 oxen, at Kansas City, Mo., with merchandise destined for Santa Fé, N. M., a distance of...

My father, Benjamin Majors, was a farmer, born in the State of North Carolina in 1794, and brought when a boy by my grandfather, Alexander Majors, after whom I am named, to Kent...

Many an Eastern city has more dead people than living. Instead of the West being young, the East is growing old. The antiquities of the Eastern cemetery are often more interesti...

It was the flower dedicated to love--to Cupid and Venus. Cupid bestowed it as an emblem upon Harpocrates, the god of silence, to bind him not to betray the evil of his mother, V...

Over thirty-two years ago, when a bachelor occupied the President's mansion at Washington, and there was no Pacific Railroad and no transcontinental telegraph line in operation...

There are thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States who, if asked how they accounted for the fact that there are so many millionaires in the United States, coul...

On Sunday, the 28th of February, a bright and auspicious day, the American army, under Colonel Doniphan, arrived in sight of the Mexican encampment at Sacramento, which could be...

The new Mormon temple marks the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints from the day when Brigham Young and his few followers first set foot in the new promis...

To one who has had to make friends of the brute creation, it is natural for him to claim companionship with those domestic animals with which he is constantly drawn by day and n...

There was about one-fourth of the entire territory of Missouri that was covered with timber, and three-fourths in prairie land, with an annual growth of sage-grass, as it was ca...

Remembering my own love of adventure as a boy, I can not refrain from giving here a chapter contributed by my son, Green Majors, which will be found both instructive and interes...

It was the afternoon of a day in early summer, along in 1859, when we found ourselves drifting in a boat down the Missouri. The morning broke with a drizzling rain, out of a nig...

When I grew up and became a married man, with daughters who were to be clothed and educated, I found it impossible to make, with the labor of one man on a farm, sufficient money...

About September 1, 1848, on my way from Independence, Mo., to Santa Fé, N. M., I met some of the soldiers of General Donaldson's regiment returning from the Mexican War on the H...

Fifty years ago, when Kansas City consisted of a warehouse and there was not a single private residence of civilized man between the Missouri River and San Francisco, S. E. Ward...

In this year a number of gentlemen made up a party and started for the far West. During that fearful journey they were lost for three months in the "Great American Desert," the...

In the settlement of the Western States and Territories one of the sources of income, and the only industry which commanded cash for the efforts involved, was that of beaver tra...

From the dawn of history to the present time, civilization has followed the valleys. From the Garden of Eden which was in the valley of the Euphrates to modern times the water c...

My son Benjamin and I worked as contractors almost a year in 1868, upon the building of the Union Pacific Railroad, and we were present at the Promontory when the Union and Cent...

During the winter of 1858-59 the public generally, throughout the United States, began to give publicity to a great gold discovery reported to have been made in the Pike's Peak...

The organization of a full-fledged train for crossing the plains consisted of from twenty-five to twenty-six large wagons that would carry from three to three and a half tons ea...

On the 18th of June, 1846, A. W. Doniphan was elected colonel of the regiment that he commanded in the Mexican War. In his speech at Independence, Jackson County, Mo., on July 2...

It is still within the memory of boys when it was almost universally agreed that nothing was more impossible than successful fruit raising in Colorado, with the exception of cer...

In August, 1838, there appeared in the far West a newspaper published at Liberty, in Clay County, Missouri, the only newspaper within many miles, a notice which read as follows:...

Henry Allen was the first postmaster of Denver, so called, and charged 50 cents for bringing a letter from Fort Laramie. The first Leavenworth and Pike's express coach arrived t...

In the winter of 1858, while my partner, Mr. W. H. Russell, John S. Jones, a citizen of Pettis County, Mo., and myself were all in Washington, D. C., which was about the time th...

The "Bonanza" State, young as she is to-day, has more towns and cities than such old and well developed States as Wisconsin, Illinois, or Minnesota had at a period in their hist...

Not only is California the land of gold, the garden of fruit, and the home of the vine, but its rich soil is the footing for the greatest trees in the world. The redwoods of Cal...

It may not be amiss just here, while writing of this "Land of the Setting Sun," its changes from savagery to civilization, to refer to one who has done so much to aid those who...

It is thirteen years since Edward Creighton, the pioneer of frontier telegraphy, died, and that he is so well and honorably remembered in the Omaha of to-day--aye, his memory re...

To be a successful trapper required great caution, as well as a perfect knowledge of the habits of the animals. The residence of the beaver was often discovered by seeing bits o...