THE HAND-BOOK OF WYOMING AND GUIDE TO THE BLACK HILLS AND BIG HORN REGIONS FOR CITIZEN, EMIGRANT, AND TOURIST

Cheyenne: [Press of Knight & Leonard], 1877.. 270 [of 272]pp., including fourteen full-page illustrations and several in-text illustrations. Lacking the final advertisement leaf. Original printed front wrapper only. Spine heavily chipped, a few small chips along edges. Text tanned but generally quite clean, with scattered light foxing and a few stains. Contemporary ownership signatures on front wrapper and titlepage. A good copy of a fragile book, lacking the rear wrapper and the final advertising leaf. Surely one of the most rapidly composed pieces of prose written on the road in America. As the author points out in the preface, scarcely sixty days elapsed between the proposal to write this work and its publication. The period also encompassed his honeymoon, and his wife tells of the trip during which the work was written in her book, FIFTEEN THOUSAND MILES BY STAGE. Strahorn wrote while travelling, and by the time he arrived back in Chicago, where the book was actually printed (by Knight & Leonard), he had composed the entire text. One of the most thorough Western promotional works, and the first guide to be published giving a history and description of the region. The three main sections of the HAND- BOOK deal with the resources of Wyoming (including sections on Yellowstone and women's suffrage); counties and cities; and the Big Horn and Black Hills regions. Also features several pages of contemporary advertisements, including a "Special Notice to Gold Seekers" from the Union Pacific Railroad, offering special rates on trips from Chicago to Custer City and Deadwood. ADAMS HERD 2181. SOLIDAY IV:793. HOWES S1055, "aa." JENNEWEIN 91. STREETER SALE 2248. SIX SCORE 104 (note). GRAFF 4000. REESE, BEST OF THE WEST 236 (note).