Western Trails Collections
Colorado
Aerial
Photographs of Colorado
University of Colorado, Map Library
Aerial photographs dramatically portray the changing landscape of Colorado: a mountain valley can be seen where there is now a reservoir; changes in the vegetation and ground cover can be traced over the years, and the growth of towns and cities documented. This website provides access to over 1,700 digitized aerial photographs of Colorado taken by the U.S. Forest Service in the years from 1938 to 1947.
The photographs can be searched or browsed using a map search or a geographic keyword search. Searches will bring up information and metadata about each photograph and a 150 dpi image that can be downloaded free of charge. (See "Using This Site" for more information.) The photographs available through this web site cover eight counties: Boulder, Clear Creek, Eagle, Gilpin, Grand, Jefferson, Larimer, and Summit.
Cattle Trails of the West
Colorado Historical Society
Head’em up and move’em out! Nothing symbolizes the excitement, the vigor, or the promise of the American West better than the cattle drives that swept across the center of the nation starting in the 1860s.
The collections of the Colorado Historical Society contain a wealth of primary resources, books, and magazine articles that illustrate the "real life" of the cowboy. Information about various aspects of the cattle trade provides a wider context within which to understand the lives of cowboys and cowgirls, ranchers and their families, businessmen, and townspeople of the West as the cattle moved through.
Dearfield: A Road Less Traveled
Black American West Museum & Heritage Center
Dearfield was a small African-American agricultural community on the plains of Colorado. The Black American West Museum & Heritage Center holds a number of artifacts related to Dearfield which are featured in an online gallery.
Diverse People Along the Trails of Colorado
Denver Museum of Nature
and Science, Anthropology Department
The DMNS Anthropology Department plans to digitize approximately 2,000 images of a select group of objects organized around the theme of Western Trails. We will focus parts of the collection that relate to those groups of people who have created and used trails within Colorado as well as trails connecting to wider networks of trade and interchange of ideas. The three major sections will be: Prehistoric Trails; Historic Trails of Exploration, Hunting, Trade & Tourism (through the early 1900s); Ethnic Diversity in Colorado (during the last 50 years).
Germans from Russia on the Trail to Colorado
Colorado State University Libraries
A major resource in the CSU Libraries is the Sidney Heitman Germans from Russia Collection.� Named in honor of the late Dr. Heitman, who was involved for years in research and teaching about the second largest ethnic group in Colorado, the collection originally emerged to support his Germans from Russia in Colorado Study Project.� The materials in the collection which render it unique include specific accounts of the Germans from Russia as immigrants in Colorado and specialized information on local settlements in the United States.�
In
Search of Health: The Tuberculosis Trail in Colorado
University of Denver Penrose Library, Ira M. Beck Archives
While many are familiar with those who traveled west in search of wealth, the story of those who came to Colorado in search of health is less familiar. Yet, probably as many came in search of health as wealth, and by the 1920s as much as perhaps 60% of Colorado's population had migrated to the state either directly, or indirectly, for treatment of tuberculosis. By the turn of the century, Colorado was known as the 'World's Sanatorium' and many hospitals and sanatoriums were founded to treat consumptives. The Jewish Consumptives' Relief Society (JCRS) was founded in 1904 in Denver, and by the time it closed in 1954, over 10,000 patients had entered its doors. The archive plans to digitize the first two hundred patient record folders, which contain a wealth of information about the growth of Colorado's community, particularly the Jewish community.
Mormon Trails in the San Luis Valley
Southern Peaks Public Library
Photographs, diaries, documents and maps from the local Mormon families that preserve the cultural and historical trail movement of the Mormon pioneers to the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado from 1870-1920.
Roads for the Modern Tourist: Accomodating Early Automobile Traffic in Rocky
Mountain National Park
University of Nothern Colorado Libraries
Roads for the Modern Touris is a collaboration between the University of Northern Colorado Libraries and the Department of History. Roads includes historically significant images related to the development of automobile access in Rocky Mountain National Park, including maps, photographs, and unpublished government archival material.
Southeastern Colorado Water Trails
Pueblo City-County Library District
The Southeastern Colorado Water Trails project is a collaboration of nine agencies and institutions joining together in an unprecedented effort to provide access to images that describe the historic and contemporary "trail" of water throughout Southeastern Colorado. This site combines multiple collections of primary source material to create a comprehensive digital history describing the vital resource that is water.
Water led to the establishment of Pueblo and many other communities in the western frontier. This natural trail was followed by native peoples, settlers, explorers, and industrialists. New water provided the essential ingredient that led to Pueblo being the smelting capital of the American West and created a new type of trail as people from Southern Europe came to work at the smelters. Water was also responsible for creating development trails within the Pueblo community through irrigation and other agriculture uses. Today, recreation and economic development are among the lasting legacies of the water trails.
Trails Across Douglas County:
Exploring Douglas County’s Historic
Transportation Corridors
Douglas County History Research Center
Tourist Trails
Grand Lake Area Historical Society
The Grand Lake Area Historical Society has digitized photographs documenting tourism to the Grand Lake area from the 1890s through the 1930s.
Web of Trails
Local History Center - Cañon
City Public Library
The Web of Trails project highlights the physical, social, and economic trails of development to hte settlements, towns, and tourist sites established in relationship to Cañon City's location as a natural geographic center. The Web of Trails includes over 750 images and oral histories that pertain to the physical byways and places of development.
Western Trails
Denver Public Library, Western History
and Genealogy Department
Western survey, trail, railroad, and highway maps from early survey period, gold rush maps, and modern highways. The tearsheet collection contains drawings from Harper's, Leslie's, London News, Aldine, and other illustrated news magazines from the late 1850's through the 1890's. The ephemera collection contains a ticket to the Hot Springs Street Railway horse car, a notice of U.S. postal regular 57 regarding the treatment and care of stage horses and mules, silver passes issued by Otto Mears to special railroad patrons, and broadsides advertising new railroad and stage lines.� The ephemera "imprint" collection consists primarily of one-sheet items printed prior to Colorado statehood, or the time between 1859 and 1876.� The imprint collection includes broadsides, invitations, announcements, legal instruments and artifacts.� For this project, photographs will be selected from the "Roads," and "Transportation" photograph subject files. These files include images from the 1860's to present and document the changes brought about by tourism, technology and population growth.� Included in this collection are roads in Western states other than Colorado (such as the Apache Trail in Arizona and the Redwood Highway in California.)
Western Trails Sheet Music Collection
University of Colorado, Boulder
Howard B. Waltz Music Library
The Western Trails Sheet Music Collection includes popular American sheet music related to Westward migration, including songs and music about trails, trains, and the motivation of people migrating Westward. Titles such "The Santa Fe Trail," "Out Where the West Begins," and "Across the Continent" capture the spirit of Western Trails.
Western Trails to Boulder: The Boulder-Colorado Sanitarium
Boulder Public Library, Carnegie Branch Library for Local History
The Boulder-Colorado Sanitarium, an offshoot of the Kellogg Sanitarium of
Battle Creek, MI, was established in Boulder in 1894. Although it started
as a small dwelling on University Hill, two years later the main Sanitarium
at 4th and Maxwell was completed. Initially begun as a tubercular sanitarium,
it soon became popular among people desiring the healthy lifestyle led by
the Seventh Day Adventists. The Carnegie Branch Library for Local History has
scanned their entire collection of photographs and documents into the Library's
database.
Western
Trails Visual Access�
Center of Southwest Studies Special Collections, Fort Lewis College
The Center of Southwest Studies expects to provide Web-based digital visual access to 1700 to 2000 items pertaining to the theme of "Views from the Coach of the Rio Grande Southern Narrow-Gauge Railroad."� The Center sees this project as the means to provide Web-based visual access to additional items in the Center's multi-dimensional collections, beginning with items selected from several particular collections such as the Rio Grande Southern Railroad photographs and the Western Colorado Power Company collection.
Western Pathfinder: General W. J. Palmer and Denver and Rio Grande Railroad
Colorado Springs Pioneer Museum
General William Jackson was born in Delaware in 1834 and raised in Philadelphia.� He attended Quaker schools and early on displayed an interest in engineering and railroads. He was an abolitionist and despite his religion's opposition to violence, he organized an all-volunteer cavalry regiment during the Civil War.� Palmer fought valiantly, was a prisoner of war, and later was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Following the War, he surveyed western railroad routes for the Kansas and Pacific Railroad. Falling in love with the West and its wide-open spaces, Palmer organized the Denver and Rio Grande Railway and founded several southern Colorado communities, including Colorado Springs. Palmer developed the narrow gauge system to improve access through Colorado's mountainous terrain. He later organized the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, and was critical in assisting the government of Mexico in building their national railroad. Palmer's business acumen, altruism, and vision truly made him one of the West's most significant pathfinders.
Kansas
Dodge City Cattle Trails & Tales
Kansas Heritage Center
The Kansas Heritage Center will digitize 500 historic newspaper articles documenting Dodge City's cowtown heritage from 1875 to 1885. Research will focus on information relating to cattle drives and their economic, social and political impact on the town. The Dodge City Times, the only continuously-published newspaper available from that era, will be the major source. The local database of articles will be full-text keyword searchable. The project Web site will be constructed with assistance from the Dodge City Public Library.
People of the Trails
Boot Hill Museum
The Boot Hill museum will contribute images of individuals that arrived in Dodge City because of the trails as well as photographs of items and documents that these individuals brought with them to Dodge City. The project will focus on the cattle trade and the influence on Dodge City of the Adobe Walls Trail, Western Trail, East branch of the Chishom Trail, the Jones and Plummer Trail, the Fort Supply Trail and the Santa Fe Trail.
Steaming West: Westward Rail
Activity Across Kansas
Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas
The Kenneth Spencer Research Library will contribute 500 images of printed items illustrating railroad activity westward through Kansas during the 1860s through the 1880s. The collection will include accounts of trips taken aboard the Union Pacific Railroad and the Kansas Pacific Railway, as well as a handbook and emigrant guide (including a map) published by the Kansas Pacific Railway. A book published in 1870 describing (with high quality prints) the building of the first railroad bridge across the Missouri River in Kansas City, as well as a newspaper article on the building of a bridge near Leavenworth, Kansas will complete the selection.
Western Trails: A Museum/Library Collaborative in Western States
Kansas State Historical Society
The Kansas Historical Society will contribute 500 images of photographs, printed materials, maps, and broadsides that document several facets of transportation across Kansas. Located at the center of the continental United States, Kansas has been crisscrossed by major trails, railroads, highways, and interstates. The Alexander Gardner collection of stereographs and Imperial photographs begin in Kansas City, Kansas and follow the Union Pacific Railway, Eastern Division westward to just past Fort Hays, Kansas. The series shows many of the towns in the eastern half of the state, the developing towns in the mid and western parts, flora, businesses, industry, transportation, hieroglyphics, geological sites, and construction of the railroad.
Western
Trails Project
Wichita State University Libraries Department of Special Collections
The Wichita State Libraries Department of Special Collections will contribute 500 images of text from the manuscript trading post journals of Wichita founder James R. Mead and four immigrant travel handbooks. Mead's trading post journals record the business transactions between fur traders, settlers, and Native Americans as they hunted and trapped in South Central Kansas primarily between 1864 and 1867. The economic interaction recorded on the edge of the frontier offers researchers and students a glimpse into the social, economic and entrepreneurial history of both Kansas and the American West. The immigrant guides span the years 1859 to 1899, the formative years of Kansas settlement. Information contained in each book includes geographic features, soil fertility, weather, roads and trails and settlements.
Nebraska
Chimney Rock: Landmark
on the Overland Trail
Nebraska State Historical Society
The Nebraska State Historical Society will contribute approximately 160 images of photographs, artifacts, documents, paintings and drawings at the Visitors Center at Chimney Rock National Monument. Perhaps the most famous of Overland Trail landmarks, Chimney Rock's importance to western emigrants from the 1840s-1860s was unparalleled. This project will enable the Society to share this information with people unable to visit in person by providing a digital exhibit of a portion of the collection.
Early Omaha: Gateway to
the West
Omaha Public Library
The Omaha Public Library will contribute 350 images of photographs, lantern slides. postcards and maps reflecting Omaha's importance as the site of the Union Pacific headquarters and point of eastern origin for the first transcontinental railway. Omaha became the home to many seeking their fortune and to immigrants who worked on the railroad and businesses supplying goods to west and east. Images and maps in the collection document Omaha's transformation from a town into a city by being a gateway to the west
Hall County, Nebraska Western Trails
Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer
The Stuhr Museum will contribute 700 images. The Museum is located in Hall County, through which the Overland Trails, transcontinental railroads and Lincoln Highway passed. A portion of the Oregon Trail remains on the Museum grounds. Images will come from Paine family travel journals of 1889, 1901, and 1920; Oregon Trail Memorial Association publications; Lincoln Highway photographs and documents; and early Hall County settler Norman Reese pioneer reminiscences.
Nebraska's Recreational Trails: Past and Present
Nebraska Library Commission
The Nebraska Library Commission will contribute 465 images of text documents reflecting the development of Nebraska recreational trails. They will include a charming 1938 "how to" guide entitled Nebraska Nature Trails written by Ruth Fleming for the Works Project Administration, a 1994 consultant's report prepared for the Nebraska Energy Office entitled A Network of Discovery, A Comprehensive Trails Plan for the State of Nebraska, and the 1997 Cowboy Trail Master Plan, created by the Rails-To-Trails Conservancy and Clark Enersen Partners architects for the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission.
Westward
Through Nebraska
Love Library, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Love Library will contribute 500 images of text concerning the westward movement through Nebraska along the Oregon Trail and Union Pacific Railroad. They will include a unique 1933 thesis entitled The Geography of the Oregon Trail in Nebraska, Crofutt's Trans-Continental Tourist's Guide (1871), Guide to the Union Pacific Railroad Lands (1870), and Silas Seymour's Incidents of a Trip through the Great Platte Valley to the Rocky Mountains and Laramie Plains in the Fall of 1866. The Library will also program and host the database of metadata records for the project.
The William Henry Jackson Collection
Oregon Trail Museum - Scotts
Bluff National Monument
The Oregon Trail Museum will contribute 500 images of paintings, sketches and photographs by famed pioneer photographer William Henry Jackson and five letters from travelers on the Oregon Trail. In recent years these images have become increasingly popular illustrations for books, articles and museum exhibits and documentaries. Posting the most requested images to the National Parks Service web site will enable writers, editors and researchers to not only learn of the existence of the collection but obtain copies more easily in an inexpensive CD-ROM format.
Wyoming
Wyoming's Western Trails
Platte County Library
and Museums
Platte County historically has been a pass-through county, beginning with pre-Euro-American travel and including the Oregon-Mormon-California routes, Cheyenne-Deadwood Stage, Pony Express, Texas Trail, and railroad lines before 1900. The participants will digitize items representing these routes and trails.
University of Wyoming Western Trails
Digitization Project
University of Wyoming Libraries and American Heritage Center
University of Wyoming's American Heritage Center and Libraries propose to digitize a minimum of 750 primary source materials from their collections. The resources selected for digitization include diaries, transcripts, photographs, maps and one University of Wyoming master's thesis. The primary focus of this material is the Oregon Trail and the secondary focus is on the Bozeman Trail.
Western Trails Project 2001-2003: Wyoming Division of Cultural Resources-Trail
Documents, Data, and Images
Wyoming Division of Cultural Resources
The Wyoming Division of Cultural Resources includes the State Archives, State Museum, State Historic Preservation Office, State Archeologist, and the Arts Council. The collections to be included in the project are a small sample of the primary historical documents, photographs, current research collections, and objects the Division maintains.
Emigrant Trails of Wyoming: Interpretations from the Collections of the
Wyoming State Historical Society
Wyoming State Historical Society
The Wyoming State Historical Society's contribution to the Western Trails Project will be digitization of trails articles from the Annals of Wyoming, paintings by Dave Paulley that record historic trail scenes and the L.C. Bishop maps, a collection of original maps of many of Wyoming's emigrant trails.
