This book is an illustrated version of the original The Way to the West by Emerson Hough. “The history of the occupation of the West is the story of a great pilgrimage. It is the record of a people always outstripping its leaders in wisdom, in energy and in foresight. A slave of politics, the American citizen has none the less always proved himself greater than politics or politicians. The American, the Westerner, if you please, has been a splendid individual. We shall have no hope as a nation when the day of the individual shall be no more. Then ultimately we shall demand Magna Charta over again; shall repeat in parallel the history of France in ’93; shall perhaps see the streets run red in our America. There are those who believe that the day of the individual in America is passing all too swiftly, that we are making history over-fast.”