It was ten years before the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869. Just by chance, there were three notable journeys across the Plains to the West that year which were described in books that are still worth reading and readily available:

• Mark Twain’s Roughing It is partly fictionalized but largely true, and it is still one of the funniest books ever written
• Sir Richard Francis Burton’s The City of the Saints: Among the Mormons and Across the Rocky Mountains to California is mostly about a trip to visit Salt Lake City and Brigham Young, but includes the whole journey from East to West
• Newspaper Editor Horace Greeley’s An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859 is not as well known but equally valuable

If you are interested in the history of the Western United States, these three books together constitute a priceless snapshot of what it was like in one particular year.