Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Western History
As a young man, Theodore Roosevelt struggled through a brutal winter on a cattle ranch in the Dakota Territory. The adventure launched a love affair with the western U.S.
Editor's Note: H.W. Brands is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of twenty books on American history, including two that were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.
Grand forces have shaped American biology across the past sixty-six million years, from the Paleocene to now.
It was the lead-up to a presidential election, an unsettling late summer for many Americans since the hugely popular incumbent, Theodore Roosevelt, was declining to run for president a second time.
With five major exploring expeditions west of the Mississippi, John C. Frémont redefined the country — with the help of his wife’s promotional skills.
Editor's Note: Steve Inskeep, the host of NPR's Morning Edition, has recently published
A historian looks at the distinctive Midwestern identity of Wilder and her "Little House on the Prairie" books.
Editor's Note: We were devastated to learn that John Miller, a longtime professor of history at South Dakota State University, passed away after submitting the following essay to American Heritage.
Americans have always envisioned a West. When they won independence from England in 1783, the West lay just beyond the Appalachian Mountains, a West celebrated in the adventures of Daniel Boone. Then people began to thread through the Cumberland Gap to make new homes there.
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