MAP OF THE MONTH – Trails of the American West

Armchair General has partnered with The Map as History, a company that produces outstanding animated maps with accompanying narration. Each month, a link to one of their animated maps will be featured on the ACG site.

This month’s map explores the Trails of American Westward Expansion. In the days before railroads were built to link the Midwest with the Pacific Coast, a half-million settlers used these difficult, often dangerous overland routes to travel to Oregon, California, New Mexico, the Great Salt Lake and elsewhere in the wide-open lands of the American Western frontier.

Click on the map above to view animation.

To learn more about the trails that took settlers westward in the days before railroads crossed the Rockies, click on the titles of online articles below.

Oregon Trail: Wagon Tracks West

Fort Laramie: Gateway to the Far West

Circle the Wagons book review

Fort Laramie, Military Bastion of the High Plains book review