Over 280 rare and often unpublished vintage photographs explore life in the Old West, from the Gold Rush to the First World War. Here are the stagecoaches, the horse drawn wagons, the towns, and the people who lived on the frontier of America. These are the emigrants who bet their lives, and many times the lives of their entire family, on a trip taking hundreds of days in cramped wagons through very dangerous territories. What is remarkably evident in this book is that there were photographers to record these events on film. Here they are given credit for capturing on film a historic chapter in the nation's history. Their images speak for themselves and Demlinger shares them with the reader, so they may understand the work of these photographers who gambled that they had recorded images for our history.