Volume 2 | The Heart of the Continent

A Record of Travel Across the Plains and in Oregon, with an Examination of the Mormon Principle

The Heart of the Continent, published in 1870, bookended his brief but prolific 13-year career. It is a sweeping treatment of the American West on the cusp of its full settlement and exploitation. His view was up close, gritty and personal. He spent several weeks on The Overland Stagecoach, from Atchison in the Kansas territory to a San Francisco catching its breath just 15 years after Sutter’s Mill. He brought back the first shocking tales of “free love” in the new Mormon Zion of Utah, and equally shocking but more violent views of lynchings, Indian massacres and the Wild West.