With Golden Visions Bright Before Them: Trails to the Mining West, 1849-1852, by Will Bagley

Drawing from hundreds of previously unpublished diaries, letters, and recollections, Will Bagley describes the fortunes and misfortunes of gold-seeking Forty-niners, Oregon-bound farmers, and Mormon pilgrims. With narrative scope and detail unmatched by earlier histories, With Golden Visions Bright Before Them, retells this classic American saga through the voices of the people whose eyewitness testimonies vividly evoke the most dramatic era of westward migration.