The American West
The American West has always held a powerful place in the nation’s imagination—a sweeping, untamed landscape shaped by ambition, struggle and the promise of opportunity. From the diverse Indigenous nations who first called it home to the settlers, outlaws and industrialists who transformed its terrain, the West exists as both a real place and a powerful myth. Its history is a tapestry of resilience and injustice, bold innovation and profound upheaval.
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In 1804, Lewis and Clark set off on a journey filled with harrowing confrontations, harsh weather and fateful decisions.
They've had to fight continually to maintain their way of life.
The country, from its commerce to the environment to even its concept of time, was profoundly altered after the completion of the railroad's 1,776 miles of track.
Yellowstone's stunning natural beauty inspired the 19th-century push to set aside the land, where Indigenous people had been present for millennia.
Migrants Travel West on the Oregon Trail
Migrants Travel West on the Oregon Trail
Over 400,000 people travel West to start a new life and claim new land along the Oregon Trail, including Lucinda Brown. One-hundred seventy years later, one of her descendants sees a kettle from her journey for the first time.
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Chief John Ross devoted much of his life to fighting against the forced removal of his people from their ancestral lands.
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The Trail of Tears was the deadly journey Native Americans were forced to undergo after being removed from their ancestral lands.
Severe exposure, starvation and disease ravaged tribes during their forced migration to present-day Oklahoma.
From secret missions to Sacagawea’s role, here are 10 lesser-known facts about the expedition.
The Lewis and Clark Expedition began in 1804 to explore the lands of the Louisiana Purchase.
The explorers not only produced maps from their 1804-1806 expedition to the American West, they also recorded some 122 animals new to science.
In 1804, Lewis and Clark set off on a journey filled with harrowing confrontations, harsh weather and fateful decisions.
A dispute over a small cannon in 1835 sparked the Texas Revolution and immortalized the battle cry “Come and Take It.”
Guides like Daniel Boone and Kit Carson used hard-won knowledge of the land to lead explorers, settlers and soldiers into unfamiliar territory.
By the close of the Indian Wars in the late 19th century, fewer than 238,000 Indigenous people remained of the estimated 5 million-plus living in North America before European contact.
Up to 16,000 Native Americans were murdered in cold blood after California became a state.
Sitting Bull (1831-1890) was the Native American chief under whom the Lakota tribes united in their struggle for survival on the North American Great Plains.
George Armstrong Custer rose to fame as a young Union commander in the Civil War before his death at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876.
As Europeans sought to control newly settled American land, wars raged between Native Americans and the frontiersmen who encroached on their territory, resources and trade.
