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

Previously

…The boomtown was stirring, its chaotic symphony of life beginning anew. He looked back at the rough-hewn buildings, the makeshift tents, the muddy creek that had birthed this fleeting empire. It was a place of vice and virtue, of desperate hope and crushing despair, a microcosm of the relentless march of progress that was transforming these majestic mountains. He knew, with a certainty that chilled him more than the morning air, that these boomtowns, like the veins of gold they exploited, would eventually run dry. But for now, the glitter remained, a siren song that continued to lure men to the untamed heart of the Rockies, leaving their footprints, both bold and stained, upon the land.