So Rugged and Mountainous: Blazing the Trails to Oregon and California, 1812-1848 (Overland West Volume I)

Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010. First edition. Hardcover. Good/Good. SIGNED. 458pp. Quarto [26 cm] Full tan cloth with a black title printed on the spine. With highlighting to the preliminary pages. In a dust jacket, with 4 thick pieces of tape which once held the dust jacket to the book (now cut so the jacket can be freed)..

Warmly inscribed by Will Bagley, in the year of publication, on the half title: "For___ Surgeon, historian, humanist, humorist, and a great Scotsman, not to mention a superlative friend and pal- To a great second career as a writer, Will Bagley, March 3, 2010." Overland West: The Story of the Oregon and California Trails, Volume I, 1812-1848. From the publisher:

The story of America's westward migration is a powerful blend of fact and fable. Over the course of three decades, almost a million eager fortune-hunters, pioneers, and visionaries transformed the face of a continent—and displaced its previous inhabitants. The people who made the long and perilous journey over the Oregon and California trails drove this swift and astonishing change. In this magisterial volume, Will Bagley tells why and how this massive emigration began.

While many previous authors have told parts of this story, Bagley has recast it in its entirety for modern readers. Drawing on research he conducted for the National Park Service's Long Distance Trails Office, he has woven a wealth of primary sources—personal letters and journals, government documents, newspaper reports, and folk accounts—into a compelling narrative that reinterprets the first years of overland migration.

Illustrated with photographs and historical maps, So Rugged and Mountainous is the first of a projected four-volume history, Overland West: The Story of the Oregon and California Trails. This sweeping series describes how the "Road across the Plains" transformed the American West and became an enduring part of its legacy. And by showing that overland emigration would not have been possible without the cooperation of Native peoples and tribes, it places American Indians at the center of trail history, not on its margins.