Exploring the West: The History and Legacy of the Explorers Who Led the Way for America’s Westward Expansion

The Louisiana Purchase encompassed all or part of 15 current U.S. states and two Canadian provinces, including Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, parts of Minnesota that were west of the Mississippi River, most of North Dakota, nearly all of South Dakota, northeastern New Mexico, Northern Texas, the portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide, and Louisiana west of the Mississippi River, including the city of New Orleans (parts of this area were still claimed by Spain at the time of the Purchase.) In addition, the Louisiana Purchase contained small portions of land that would eventually become part of the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. The purchase, which doubled the size of the young nation, comprises around 23% of current American territory.
In the aftermath of the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark expedition was a much-heralded blow for American rights in the face of international competition, but that was only one of four expeditions authorized by Jefferson. Four years before Lewis and Clark set off, an army officer from New Jersey led two long-distance treks, one northward to the headwaters of the Mississippi River and the other to the Southwest. These were the only expeditions authorized by Jefferson while they were already en route, planned and launched by subordinates within the military.
Of all the legends and folk heroes who lived in the 19th century, men such as Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, few actually accomplished as much as Kit Carson. A frontier boy who hopped onto the Santa Fe Trail as a teen, Carson became the quintessential mountain man during the 1830s and was literally a trailblazer for John C. Fremont’s historic expeditions through the West in the 1840s. Along the way, Carson learned so many Native American dialects that he was considered nearly as proficient talking with them as he was fighting them.