Review of Scenery, Curiosities, and Stupendous Rocks: William Quesenbury's Overland Sketches, 1850-51 by David Royce Murphy, with contributions by Michael L. Tate and Michael Farrell

Authors

James Peck, University of Oklahoma

Date of this Version

Summer 2012

Document Type

Article

Citation

Great Plains Quarterly 32:3 (Summer 2012).

Comments

Copyright © 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.

Abstract

This handsome volume is a welcome addition to the growing literature detailing nineteenth- century overland migration, especially travel in and through the Great Plains. Its subject is the Omaha World-Herald's William Quesenbury sketchbook, published here in its entirety for the first time. Quesenbury, who traveled west from Arkansas to California seeking gold in 1850 and returned east with John Wesley Jones as part of his team of Pantoscope artists in 1851, produced more landscape drawings of the North Platte and Sweetwater Rivers High Plains regions than any other historical figure.