Across America and Back [electronic resource] : Retracing My Great-Grandparents' Remarkable Journey / by Mary Ann Hooper.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hooper, Mary Ann, 1944- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States--Description and travel.

United States.

West (U.S.)--Description and travel.

West (U.S.).

United States--Social life and customs--1865-1918.

Brattleboro (Vt.)--Biography.

Brattleboro (Vt.).

Hooper, Mary Ann, 1944---Travel--United States.

Hooper, Mary Ann.

Rice, Fannie, 1844---Travel--United States.

Rice, Fannie.

Rice, Charles, 1838---Travel--United States.

Rice, Charles.

Railroad travel--West (U.S.).

Railroad travel.

Railroad travel--United States.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (1 PDF (ix, 205 pages) :) illustrations, map, genealogical table

Place of Publication:

Reno [Nevada] : University of Nevada Press, [2017]

Summary:

After unearthing her great-grandparents' diaries, Mary Ann Hooper set out on a journey to retrace their 1871 trip across the United States on the newly-opened Transcontinental Railroad--via Chicago, just destroyed by the Great Fire, then across the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains to the Golden City of San Francisco. Filled with rich details of time, place, and culture, Mary Ann's thoughtful and compelling narrative is both a re-creation of a family journey and a thoughtful account of how the American West has changed over the last 150 years. Using the common thread of the same train trip across the American landscape, she weaves together the two stories--her great grandparents, Charles and Fannie Crosby's leisurely Victorian tourist trip described in both their diaries--and her own trip. Mary Ann's adventurous and determined voice fills the pages with entertaining encounters on the train, escapades on her folding bike, and her reflections on her birth country and her own life story. During her journey, she discovers the stories of her 1950s childhood reflect a "Wild West" at odds with the West her great-grandparents record in their diaries, leading her to uncover more of the real and meatier history of the American West--going through conquest, rapid settlement, and economic development. As Mary Ann fulfills her quest to understand better why glorified myths were created to describe the Wild West of her childhood, and reflects on the pitfalls of what "progress" is doing to the environment, she is left with a much bigger question: Can we transform our way of doing things quickly enough to stop our much-loved West becoming an uninhabitable desert?

Contents:

To Chicago

destroyed by the Great Fire

To Omaha

gateway to the West

Across the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains

Wyoming

cowboy and Indian country

Salt Lake City and the Mormons

Across the desert to San Francisco

Arrival in San Francisco

Excursion to Santa Barbara and Los Angeles

Back in San Francisco for the Chinese New Year

Return Home via gold mines and Yosemite Valley.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-943859-67-1

OCLC:

1019840441