11 h 41 minAudiobook13 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 11 h 41 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What does the road west look like when you follow the people who walk it?
In The Way to the West, and the Lives of Three Early Americans, Emerson Hough follows Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett and Kit Carson. Their lives mark different stages of America's westward movement, from the Appalachians toward the Pacific. Hunters, settlers and guides cross difficult ground, facing hardship and conflict along the way.
Boone finds a path through the mountains. Crockett carries his backwoods experience into politics. Carson moves from trapping to guiding in the far Southwest. Hough puts these men within a larger story of ordinary people on the move. His account admires pioneer courage, but its treatment of Native peoples reflects the views of his own time.
What you’ll discover
- Boone among the mountains Follow a hunter drawn to the forest as he finds a way through the mountains.
- The cost of settlement See Kentucky's threatened forts and the Native peoples fighting to keep their hunting grounds.
- Crockett beyond the backwoods Meet a bear hunter with little schooling who survives by his wits and enters politics.
- Carson across the plains Travel beyond the Mississippi with a trapper who becomes a guide to the far Southwest.
- The pioneer at the center Explore Hough's belief that ordinary pioneers, rather than soldiers or statesmen, drive the movement west.
Who will love it
You will enjoy this if you love frontier stories, maps and trails, or the lives of Boone, Crockett and Carson, and like a writer with a strong voice who ties rivers, rifles and railways into one sweeping story.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Travel helps explain the Western man
- Rivers explain the pioneers' choices
- Southern pioneers opened the western country
- Better roads helped hold the nation together
- Boone's importance lay in staying
- Crockett grew from backwoodsman into citizen
- The pathfinders came before the fame
- Railways changed more than the routes
- Ways of travelling shaped the West
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The Way to the West, and the Lives of Three Early Americans
by Emerson Hough · 1903
Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett and Kit Carson push the frontier west until a silk hat ends the beaver trade.
Challenging5–10 hours to read16 languages
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In short
What does it take to build a country? Emerson Hough answers with an ax, a rifle, a birch-bark canoe and a horse.
The Way to the West, and the Lives of Three Early Americans at a glance
- Reading time
- About 6 h 35 min5 h 15 min fast, 7 h 55 min slow
- Length
- 94,600 words
- Library level
- Challenging long sentences, a rich vocabulary
- First published
- 1903by Emerson Hough
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Four plain tools built the West
Hough opens with objects, not battles. He says the ax, the rifle, the boat and the horse made the West possible. Each served a practical need, and none carried any ornament, because the settler had too much to do.
The ax had a hickory handle a yard long and a hard steel edge. With it the settler blazed a trail and built his cabin and his chairs. The long rifle came out of Pennsylvania. Its small ball saved lead and its long barrel gave deadly accuracy. The birch-bark canoe could be carried a mile on one man's shoulders. The horse let a traveller cross open plains where no boat could go.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 13 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1903
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 7 h 35 min
- Level
- Challenging
Cite this edition
Hough, Emerson. The Way to the West, and the Lives of Three Early Americans. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-way-to-the-west-and-the-lives-of-three-early-americans.
Hough, E. (2026). The way to the West, and the lives of three early Americans. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-way-to-the-west-and-the-lives-of-three-early-americans (Original work published 1903)
Hough, Emerson. The Way to the West, and the Lives of Three Early Americans. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-way-to-the-west-and-the-lives-of-three-early-americans.
@book{hough2026way,
author = {Hough, Emerson},
title = {The Way to the West, and the Lives of Three Early Americans},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-way-to-the-west-and-the-lives-of-three-early-americans},
note = {First published 1903}
}
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What is The Way to the West about?
It is a history of how Americans settled the West, told through tools, rivers, trails and railways. Emerson Hough also gives full biographies of Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett and Kit Carson as examples of the Western man.
What is the one date Hough wants readers to remember?
He asks readers to remember the date when trapping beaver stopped paying. The book places that moment in 1834, when the silk hat lowered demand and the trapper's old West ended.
Who are the three early Americans in the title?
They are Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett and Kit Carson. Boone settled Kentucky, Crockett rose from backwoods hunter to congressman before the Alamo, and Carson guided explorers across the Rockies and the Sierras.
The author
Emerson Hough
1857–1923 · American Western novelist
Emerson Hough was an American writer born in Newton, Iowa, in 1857. He worked as a journalist and lived in Chicago. He wrote novels and nonfiction about the American West. His books include The Mississippi Bubble, published in 1902, and The Covered Wagon, published in 1922. He died in Evanston, Illinois, in 1923.
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