On the trail

WELCOME!

Thanks for visiting Notes from the Frontier! This blog is for history lovers fascinated by the American West
and pioneer and Indian life on the frontier. I started this new blog in 2019 and it grew very quickly
to more than 100,000 readers! Today it has nearly 400 posts.
I spent many years of researching my just-released debut historical novel, Blood to Rubies
about Chief Joseph and his heroic struggle to save his people in 1877. (It's already bestselling and award-winning! Press the blue button below for more info.) During my research, I discovered that so much of what we'd been taught in history books and by Hollywood was just plain wrong. So I decided to start a history blog. And it's been a pure joy and a life's passion project for me.
We'll cover many topics: from "soiled doves" to slavery, firearms to freak show, home brew to homosexuality, tough men and tougher women, cowboys and Indians, childbirth and death, dreams and desperation, myths and the truth. And, as they say, truth is stranger than fiction!
It's sure to be a wild ride! So hang on to your hat and let's GIDDYUP!

SPECIAL NOTE: Go to the Directory to view more specific categories .

Here's me, author-to-be, Deborah Hufford, at 16 and the Dayton Rodeo Queen in Iowa (which was the U.S. National Rodeo of the Year that year! My childhood horse was named Sundance, and was a celebrity among all the children in my small farming town. He even carried the Iowa governor in our rodeo parade one year.

When Sundance died at the ripe old age of 30, our town newspaper ran his obituary. I was so lucky to have the best horse in the world 💙

Take a wild ride into America’s past.

Quilting on the Oregon Trail

Quilts brought warmth, comfort, memories of loved ones, and hope on the journey West full of fear and hardship. As surely as pens were...

4 min read

Death on the Trail

About 10% of westering pioneers died on the Oregon Trail going west. That is 20 graves per mile, mostly unmarked. The Oregon Trail has...

3 min read

Sod Houses – Humble Homes of the Prairie

Once westering pioneers reached their destination, they had to build homes. Those homes reflected the available natural resources of the...

1 min read

A Pioneer Diary

These journal entries by Welsh immigrant James Bryant give us glimpses of pioneer day-to-day life on the trail west in 1862. My name is...

7 min read

Tools Pioneers Needed to Survive

Here is a little primer of some basic tools pioneers packed in their covered wagons going West. This isn't a complete list, by any means....

1 min read

Pioneer Christmas Diaries

American pioneers of lore would no doubt be shocked at what Christmas has become in our modern consumer world today. Their Christmas...

7 min read

The First Wagon Trains West

When the Lewis and Clark Expedition first explored the far western reaches of the North American continent from 1804-1806, their arrival...

7 min read

Pioneer Survival Guides in the 1800s

The mortality rate of westering pioneers was very high. Perhaps the greatest cause of death was pioneers not knowing the basics of survival.

7 min read

Rabies on the Frontier

Rabies reached epidemic stages in some cities and territories in the 1800s and early 1900s and Americans were hysterical with fear.

7 min read

How Log Cabins Were Built

The log cabin is an American icon. The rough-hewn, squat and humble house has long been lionized in our lore.

9 min read

What Pioneers Ate

Pioneer survival depended on harsh realities and there was little room for sentimentality in food production.

8 min read

Parting of the Ways

By far the most traveled frontier route West was a common trail shared by Oregon-bound and California-bound settlers.

6 min read

Frontier Quilts

In frontier America, quilts were a way for women to gain immortality.

8 min read

Kate Shelley

In 1881, a 17-year-old Irish immigrant girl named Kate Shelley risked her own life to save the lives of 200 souls on a midnight train.

3 min read

Death on the Trail

The Oregon Trail has been called a 2,000-mile-long graveyard.

3 min read

Pioneer Cemeteries

Today, all of us know of pioneer graveyards. They are lonely plots overgrown on random roadsides, with crumbling gravestones.

3 min read