author
Thomas Jefferson Farnham
1804–1848
Best known for vivid firsthand accounts of the American West, this restless traveler turned difficult journeys into books that helped shape how 19th-century readers imagined Oregon and California. His life was short, but his writing captured a period of rapid expansion and uncertainty on the frontier.
2 Audiobooks
Farnham's Travels in the Great Western Prairies, etc., part 2, October 21-December 4, 1839 and De Smet's Oregon Missions and Travels over the Rocky Mountains, 1845-1846
by Thomas Jefferson Farnham, Pierre-Jean de Smet
Farnham's Travels in the Great Western Prairies, etc., part 1, May 21-October 16, 1839
by Thomas Jefferson Farnham
About the author
Born in Vermont in 1804, he trained as a lawyer before becoming an explorer and writer whose name became closely tied to the American West. In 1839 he led an overland party to Oregon and later wrote about the journey, drawing on direct experience of the prairies, the Rockies, and the Oregon Country.
His books 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. He also became involved in the politics of the Oregon question, writing in support of stronger American action in the region.
He died in California in 1848. Today he is remembered less as a polished literary figure than as an energetic eyewitness: a writer whose travel narratives preserve the ambitions, hardships, and arguments of the early overland West.