Research Catalog
A remarkable curiosity : dispatches from a New York City journalist's 1873 railroad trip across the American West
- Title
- A remarkable curiosity : dispatches from a New York City journalist's 1873 railroad trip across the American West / Amos Jay Cummings ; edited and compiled by Jerald T. Milanich.
- Author
- Cummings, Amos J. (Amos Jay), 1841-1902.
- Publication
- Boulder, Colo. : University Press of Colorado, [2008], ©2008.
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| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Text | Request in advance | F594 .C945 2008 | Off-site |
Details
- Additional Authors
- Milanich, Jerald T.
- Description
- x, 371 pages : illustrations; 23 cm
- Summary
- "In 1873, Amos Jay Cummings, a decorated Civil War veteran and journalist for the New York Sun newspaper, set out on a westward journey aboard the newly completed transcontinental railroad. For some time, miners, settlers, and entrepreneurs had already been heading west to make their fortunes, and Cummings made the trip in part to see what all the fuss was about. During his six-month expedition from Kansas to California, Cummings sent extraordinary and engaging accounts of the American West back to his readers in New York." "Collected in this volume for the first time are Cummings's portraits of a land and its assortment of characters unlike anything back East. Characters like Pedro Armijo, the New Mexican sheep tycoon who took Denver by storm, and more prominently the Mormon prophet Brigham Young and one of his wives, Ann Eliza Young, who was filing for divorce at the time of Cummings's arrival."--BOOK JACKET.
- Subjects
- Journalists > New York (State) > New York > Biography
- West (U.S.) > Biography
- West (U.S.) > History > 1860-1890
- Natural history > West (U.S.)
- West (U.S.) > Social life and customs > 19th century
- Frontier and pioneer life > West (U.S.)
- West (U.S.) > Description and travel
- Railroad travel > West (U.S.) > History > 19th century
- Cummings, Amos J (Amos Jay), 1841-1902 > Travel > West (U.S.)
- Cummings, Amos J (Amos Jay), 1841-1902 > Correspondence
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 349-353) and index.
- Contents
- Amos Jay Cummings and His Journey across America -- The Flat Earth Society -- 1. Over the Kansas Plains -- 2. The Earthly Paradise Crops of Grain, Stumps of Stone, and a Town without Rumbirds -- 3. A Canadian in Colorado -- 4. The Petrified Stumps -- 5. The Town in the Desert -- Underlying Wealth -- 6. The Fate of a Gold Seeker -- 7. In the Golden Gulches -- 8. The Story of Little Emma -- I Met a Man with Seventeen Wives: Divorce Mormon Style -- 9. The Seventeenth Wife -- 10. The Great Utah Divorce -- 11. An Interesting Conversation with Ann Eliza Young -- 12. The Prophet's Divorce Strangers in a Strange Land -- 13. The Arizona Expedition -- 14. The Mormon Pioneers -- 15. The American Dead Sea Lambs and Other Fauna to the Slaughter -- 16. Mutton Chops by the Million -- 17. The King of Jack Rabbits -- 18. The Funeral Postponed -- 19. Duel with Six-Shooters The Return Trip Home.
- ISBN
- 9780870819261 (alk. paper)
- 0870819267 (alk. paper)
- LCCN
- 2008025223
- 40015902083
- OCLC
- ocn225875266
- 225875266
- SCSB-5433436
- Owning Institutions
- Columbia University Libraries