Thomas Jefferson Farnham

A lawyer, traveler, and author, he is best remembered for books that brought the landscapes and politics of the American West to readers in the 1840s. He wrote about long overland journeys through the prairies and Rocky Mountains and about the Oregon Territory, combining firsthand travel narrative with strong opinions about expansion and settlement.

His works include Travels in the Great Western Prairies, the Anahuac and Rocky Mountains, and in the Oregon Territory and Travels in the Californias, and Scenes in the Pacific Ocean. Those books made him part of the wave of writers who helped turn Oregon and California into subjects of national curiosity.

Read now, his work offers both adventure and a revealing window into the ambitions, arguments, and imagination of the United States in the years before the Gold Rush and before the West was fully incorporated into the nation.