Tall and handsome, vigorous and hot-tempered, fearless to a fault, Frederick W. Lander (1821–1862) became one of the most name-recognized Americans in the yea

Wallace Stegner called South Pass “one of the most deceptive and impressive places in the West.” Nowhere can travelers cross the Rockies so easily as throug

Before Lander became a town, the area had already been the summer hunting grounds for numerous Native American tribes, seen a few rendezvous, and had become a f

Drawing on author-editor William P. MacKinnon's half-century of research and a wealth of carefully selected new material, At Sword's Point presents the first fu