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It’s heartening in these disheartening times to find there are book lovers everywhere. It may not alter the whole world/hell/handbasket dynamic of 2026, but there’s delight in discovering bookish nooks in unexpected places. A cozy reading spot 👆hides amid the over-the-top hallucinogenic spectacle of Denver’s Meow Wolf, for example. Despite its appearance, it’s strictly BYOBook.…
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Spray paint tags on urban walls. Inky scrawlings in restroom stalls. You thought those were modern problems? Oh, no, no, no. The Oregon Trail is covered in graffiti. Those pioneers etched their names and initials on anything that didn’t move. How do you think Wyoming’s Names Hill and Register Cliff got their names? You can still…
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Do time travelers suffer jet lag? I’ve spent entirely too much time in the 19th century lately, plunging down research rabbit holes and popping back up all dazed and desynchronized. I’ve never been much of a souvenir collector, but I don’t know what else to call the bits and bobs banging around my brain after…
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If spending a day in a bookstore, browsing books and compiling an ever bigger TBR pile for the nightstand is appealing (🙋♀️), circle this Saturday on your calendar – er, create an event on your Google cal. April 25 is Independent Bookstore Day, and bookish celebrations are unfolding at 2,000 indie bookshops across the country.…
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I’m deep into old words these days — Gold Rush and Victorian-era slang, 19th century dictionaries and troves of etymology treasure. I lost an entire afternoon to Merriam-Webster’s fantastic Time Traveler the other day. It sorts words by the first year they were used in print, whether it’s 1613 (alimony, dungaree) or 2025 (vibe coding).…
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Nineteenth-century fort? Gold Rush ghost town? Historical museum straddling the Platte River in Nebraska? I’m so there. The Platte River is striking, a braided river whose waterways eddy and surge around willow-dotted islands and sandbars some 310 miles, with a tributary — the North Platte River — that takes the river’s entire length to more…
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Reading through hundreds of Oregon Trail diaries at the Merrill J. Mattes Research Library at the National Frontier Trails Museum in Independence, Missouri — as well as online and in published volumes back home — one thing kept hitting me. Nearly every diary entry noted how many miles the journal keeper had traveled that day.…
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Am I obsessed with the Oregon Trail and the California Gold Rush? Yes seems an understatement. Name the California or Oregon trail-related landmark and chances are good I’ve been there. Ghost towns? Yep. Gold mines? Oh, so many. Swales and wagon ruts, tailing wheels, blacksmith shops and more. I’ve panned for gold and sipped sarsaparilla…
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There might be a few people out there who never saw the famous TV show when it aired back in 1974. OK, one person. Maybe two. The “Little House on the Prairie” series is so much a part of pop culture even now that the now-50-year-old series racked up an astonishing 13.3 billion minutes of…
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I’ve long been obsessed with the 19th century’s western frontier, from the breathtakingly hardy (and on occasion foolhardy) pioneers who trekked the Oregon Trail to the Gold Country towns of the California foothills. Take Sutter Creek, for example, a tiny Gold Rush-era town that offers great little restaurants, charming B&Bs, wine tasting rooms and a…
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Jackie Burrell, Writer 