author

William Francis Hooker

1856–1938

A firsthand storyteller of the American West, this memoirist wrote about ox-team freighting, frontier towns, and life on the plains with the detail of someone who had truly been there. His best-known book, The Prairie Schooner, turns those rough early experiences into vivid, readable adventure.

1 Audiobook

The Prairie Schooner

The Prairie Schooner

by William Francis Hooker

About the author

Born on May 17, 1856, in Wisconsin, William Francis Hooker later became known for writing about the nineteenth-century West from personal experience. A Brigham Young University Library description of his papers says that in 1874 he began working as a bullwhacker, driving ox wagons to carry supplies to Native American reservations and army posts.

That background shaped The Prairie Schooner, published in 1918. In its opening pages, Hooker explains that he is writing about the era after the Union Pacific reached Ogden, when freight still had to be hauled by ox-team across long stretches of western territory. The book mixes memoir, frontier anecdote, and regional history, giving readers a ground-level view of a changing West.

Hooker died in 1938. Although he is not a household name today, his writing remains valuable for its lively firsthand account of overland freighting and frontier life.