Charles E. (Charles Edward) Young

Charles E. Young, usually identified as Charles Edward Young, was born in 1846 and is known for Dangers of the Trail in 1865: A Narrative of Actual Events, first published in 1912. The book is presented as a personal recollection of a journey across the plains to Denver in 1865, written many years after the events it describes.

Young's writing has lasted because it reads like a direct window into frontier travel: tense, immediate, and full of the hazards of overland movement in the post-Civil War West. Modern editions and public-domain releases have kept the work in circulation for readers interested in western migration, Colorado history, and memoirs of trail life.

Some catalog and bookseller records list him as Charles Edward Young, and one widely cited memorial record gives his lifespan as 1846–1915. Beyond those basic facts, reliably confirmed biographical detail is limited, which makes his surviving narrative the clearest introduction to the man behind the book.