Frontier Footprints: A True History of the Rocky Mountains by Amy Kathryn Allen

Previously

…The fur trade had been good, a stepping stone. But he sensed, with an almost primal instinct, that an even greater fortune lay hidden beneath the surface of these majestic peaks, a fortune that would require a different kind of extraction, a more profound upheaval. The mountains, he believed, were not yet yielding their true riches. And he, Silas Vance, would be there to claim it, no matter the cost. The wind, as it swept through the now-empty meadow, carried a premonition, a hushed warning of the changes yet to come, a promise of a future where the echoes of the fur trade would be drowned out by the thunderous roar of a new, insatiable hunger.