A Cowboy History of the Western Wilderness

A Cowboy Version of the western wilderness.

I have always been interested in the history of the land that spawned me. In later years I have written several articles/stories about elements of the history of the west, generally with a different twist. Some provide an interesting take on the early history here. Part of that is looking at the journeys of various explorers and native travel routes based on the day to day needs of horse and canoe travel. The trails that horse people use have to have water and grass, and in the day of the stone hatchet, they could not or did not bother trying to cut their way through dense timber. The big timber in the Fernie area (not obvious now) was the reason that the Crow’s Nest Pass was rarely used in the early days, while the North Kootenay Pass and Upper Flathead trail was used, simply because it had lost of grass along the way and few sections that needed to be cut out, even though parts of that trail were very steep compared to the Crow’s Nest route just a few miles to the north. I have also read history books from southern Alberta, northern Montana and South East BC, which provides a different perspective. So, read on….