Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Bent, Charles, 1799–1847, American frontiersman, b. St. Louis. He entered the fur trade of the Missouri River and became one of the mountain men. His interests turned to the Southwest, and he led ex...

(Encyclopedia) Kearny, Stephen Watts kärˈnē [key], 1794–1848, American general in the Mexican War, b. Newark, N.J. At the beginning of the Mexican War he was made commander of the Army of the West with the rank...

(Encyclopedia) Pike, Albert, 1809–91, American lawyer, Confederate general in the Civil War, b. Boston. He settled (1832) in Arkansas, where he became a newspaper editor and a lawyer. He was a captain in the Mexic...

(Encyclopedia) Appalachian Trail, officially Appalachian National Scenic Trail, hiking path, 2,144 mi (3,450 km) long, passing through 14 states, E United States. Conceived in 1921 by Benton MacKaye, forester and re...

(Encyclopedia) Pecos National Historical Park, 6,671 acres (2,702 hectares), N New Mexico; est. as a national monument 1965, designated a national historical park 1990. The park contains the remains of the Pecos pue...

(Encyclopedia) Canadian kənāˈdēən [key], river, 906 mi (1,458 km) long, rising in NE New Mexico. and flowing E across N Texas and central Oklahoma into the Arkansas River in E Oklahoma. In the mid-1800s, the Ca...

(Encyclopedia) Overland Trail, any of several trails of westward migration in the United States. The term is sometimes used to mean all the trails westward from the Missouri to the Pacific and sometimes for the cent...

(Encyclopedia) Saint John's College, at Annapolis, Md., and Santa Fe, N.Mex.; coeducational; founded 1696 as King William's School, chartered 1784, opened 1786 as St. John's College. The Santa Fe campus was opened i...

(Encyclopedia) Trail, city (1991 pop. 7,919), SE British Columbia, Canada, on the Columbia River just N of the Wash. border. It is a metal-smelting center for a mining area that produces lead, zinc, silver, and gold...

(Encyclopedia) Chisholm Trail, route over which vast herds of cattle were driven from Texas to the railheads in Kansas after the Civil War. Its name is generally believed to come from Jesse Chisholm, a part-Cherokee...