Miles Goodyear

Historian Francis Parkman said of the western fur trappers and mountain men, “I defy the annals of chivalry to furnish the record of a life more wild and perilous than that of a Rocky Mountain Trapper.” Surprisingly, there was a mountain man named Miles Goodyear who was born and raised in Connecticut. He died in his early thirties but made his mark in that wild and perilous life as a trapper but also as a founder of two cities in the west, a horse trader and gold seeker. Miles Goodyear’s life story is full of intrigue, wild adventures and involvement with people of consequence in the west from the time he went west in 1836 until his death in 1849. No dime novel or prize winning book contains his story and he never wrote a journal. He is the subject of only one little known hard cover biography, an article in the Utah Historical Quarterly and a newspaper article in a Connecticut newspaper and there is only one historical marker that includes his name. Yet Miles Goodyear, who was described in a journal as “a restless native of Yankee land,” left a significant footprint on the development of the far west. It is hard to imagine how he could compress so many adventures and so much living in the short span of thirty-two years. He did make his mark in the Rocky Mountains and plains of the far west. This is his story.

History belongs to the people, Dean May reminds us, and must ultimately be accessible all. Based on his award-winning television series, Utah: A People's History provides a sweeping view of the state's past. From prehistory to present, May explains Utah as it is today and its promise for the future. The video series upon which this book is based is no longer available for sale.

From the famed Oregon Trail to the boardwalks of Dodge City to the great trading posts on the Missouri River to the battlefields of the nineteenth-century Indian Wars, there are places all over the American West where visitors can relive the great Western migration that helped shape our history and culture. This guide to the Mountain West states of Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana--one of the five-volume Finding the Wild West series--highlights the best preserved historic sites as well as ghost towns, reconstructions, museums, historical markers, statues, works of public art that tell the story of the Old West. Use this book in planning your next trip and for a storytelling overview of America’s Wild West history.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1962.