The American West is a new Library database published by Adam Matthew Digital. The database provides digital access to primary source materials from the Everett D. Graff collection at the Newberry Library in Chicago.
Photographs, illustrations, maps, travel journals, personal accounts, papers, wanted posters, claim certificates, prospectuses, directories, and more serve as valuable documentation of the history of the westward expansion and of the evolution of Western towns and infrastructure.
Thematic areas covered in The American West are:
- Pioneers, hunters, and explorers
- Mining an the gold rush
- The Mormon exodus from Ohio to Salt Lake City
- Homesteaders, overland travel, and early settlements
- Cattle ranchers
- Railroads, transportation, and urban history
- Outlaws, vigilantes, and the law
- Agricultural development and the environment
- The imagined West: Wild West shows and ficition
- Borderlands (Canada, Pacific Northwest, Texas, Mexico, and the Southwest)