author
Sarah Raymond Herndon
1840–1914
A sharp-eyed pioneer memoirist, she turned a difficult 1865 journey to Montana into a lively firsthand account of wagon-train travel and frontier life. Her writing is valued for its humor, detail, and the immediacy of someone who actually made the trip.
1 Audiobook
Days on the Road: Crossing the Plains in 1865
by Sarah Raymond Herndon
About the author
Born in Maryland in 1840 and raised partly in Ohio, Sarah Raymond Herndon became part of the westward movement when she traveled with her family to Virginia City, Montana Territory, in 1865. That journey later became the basis of Days on the Road: Crossing the Plains in 1865, a memoir drawn from her diary and remembered for its vivid picture of overland travel.
Herndon was also an early teacher in Virginia City, and archival records describe her as likely the first public school teacher in an organized school district in Montana Territory. In addition to her travel writing, her surviving papers and diaries offer a close, everyday view of frontier community life, work, and schooling.
She died in 1914 in Virginia City, Montana. Today she is remembered both as a Montana pioneer and as a writer whose personal account helps modern readers see the American West through one traveler’s own words.