Great American Journeys

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In Great American Journeys, four authors set out in the spirit of 19th-century wayfarer Robert Louis Stevenson to discover the delights of travel. Each writer chose a different mode of locomotion-foot and horse, boat, train, and automobile- and traced historic routes across the American land. Their reports and the accompanying photographs form a riveting mosaic of people and of places encountered along the way.
Following old footpaths and horse trails led Cynthia Ramsay into “special corners ... where frontier ethics and individualism survive.” She traveled the Wilderness Road through the Appalachian highlands and pursued the lonely and hazardous trail of Pony Express riders across the West.
“Where did you come from?” “How far are you going?” were the wistful questions tossed from shore as Jennifer Urquhart traveled up the Mississippi River on a festive steamboat. Recounting the “sweeping saga of America’s waterways,: she also floated a flatboat on West Virginai’s Kanawha River and sailed across Lake Huron.
That “certain magic” of riding the rails captivated Tom Melham- in a steam locomotive puffing along the steep canyon of Colorado’s Animas River and in Amtrak’s the Empire Builder from Chicago to Seattle. His train trips afforded him close-ups of constantly shifting scenery.
With “no precis agenda except to keep my compass arrowed mostly west,” Thomas O’Niell reveled in the freedom of a car journey. Driving the Nation Road in southwestern Pennsylvania, he encountered a wagon train and an antique car rally. Tracing the route of stagecoaches across the Southwest, he sampled the desert vastness.
The delights and the joys of travel come alive in Great American Journeys. In these pages the lure of the open road, the temptation to venture beyond the next bend, the desire to strike out for the distant horizon all cast a potent spell.