Pinckney’s Treaty: The Agreement That Opened the Mississippi
PinckneysTreaty For American settlers living west of the Appalachian Mountains in the 1790s, the Mississippi River was more than a geographical landmark. It was a commercial lifeline. Farmers in...
Jim Beckwourth: The Mountain Man Who Became a Legend of the American West
Jim Beckwourth Few figures in the history of the American West lived a life quite like Jim Beckwourth. Born into slavery around 1800, Beckwourth eventually became a fur trapper, trader, scout,...
Remembering Euthanasia Sherman Meade, Frontier Physician and Niece of Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman
When we think of courageous women of the 19th century, among the top ten would be Clara Barton, the Civil War-era nurse who served on the battlefields of the “war between the States,” and who...
September 7, 1857: The Mountain Meadows Massacre Takes Place, A Black Mark on the History of the American West
The history of the American West is replete with stories of atrocities committed by Native-Americans against white settlers, and vice-versa. There is no escaping that our U.S. government failed to...
August 20: 1794: The Battle of Fallen Timbers Spells the End of the “Native Confederacy” at the Hands of General “Mad” Anthony Wayne
The morning of August 20, 1794 broke humid and gray over the Maumee River, in present-day Indiana and Ohio. A storm had torn through the forest through which the American Legion under the command...
Wingfield’s War Reshapes Nevada Mining Industry, Following Labor Strife at the Goldfield Mines
Founded in 1902, the town of Goldfield, Nevada experienced a meteoric rise over the next five years to become a center of the mining industry In the United States. By the winter of 1907, Goldfield...
Collis P. Huntington: One of the Big Four” Tycoons of the Western Railroad Industry
Collis P. Huntington was an important American businessman and railroad leader during the 1800s – one of the “Big Four” tycoons of the western railroad industry. He was born in 1821 in...
The Proclamation to the People of the Territory of Arizona: August 1, 1861
After the expansion of the New Mexico Territory in 1853, the fate of the nearby Arizona Territory was in question. In 1856, a petition was presented to the U.S. Congress requesting organization of...
The Controversial History of Nevada’s Comstock Lode
The American Revolution produced a number of unlikely war heroes who came out of nowhere to become leading generals in the Continental Army. Henry Knox, for example, was a bookseller in Boston who...
The Transcontinental Telegraph: A New Era of Connection
When the transcontinental telegraph was completed on October 24, 1861, it did more than replace the Pony Express — it reshaped how a nation communicated. For nonprofits today, its story offers a...
