author
Randolph B. (Randolph Barnes) Marcy
1812–1887
Best remembered for his lively frontier guide The Prairie Traveler, this U.S. Army officer turned years of hard travel across the American West into one of the era’s most practical books. His life joined exploration, military service, and firsthand reporting from a fast-changing frontier.
1 Audiobook
The Prairie Traveler: A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions
by Randolph B. (Randolph Barnes) Marcy
About the author
Born in Massachusetts in 1812, Randolph Barnes Marcy graduated from West Point in 1832 and spent much of his career with the U.S. Army on the expanding western frontier. He served in the Black Hawk War and the Mexican-American War, then took part in expeditions that mapped and described parts of the Great Plains and the Southwest.
Marcy is most closely associated with The Prairie Traveler (1859), a handbook drawn from his own experience on the trail. It offered practical advice for overland travel and became widely useful to emigrants, soldiers, and others heading west. His reputation rests not only on military service, but also on the way he turned field knowledge into clear, usable writing.
During the Civil War, he served in important staff roles, including as chief of staff to George B. McClellan, who was also his son-in-law. Marcy died in 1887, but his work remains a vivid window into nineteenth-century American exploration and travel.