Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage, 1877-1880

The first volume takes the Strahorns, tireless scouts for the expanding railroad, through Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, New Mexico, Montana, Washington, and Oregon in the late 1870s. They experience every kind of discomfort, mishap, and peril as their Concord coach bumps down corduroy roads. Adell writes that she was 'the first woman in many then unexploited regions' of the West. After she and Pard reach the West Coast in 1880, their lives take another adventurous turn described vividly in Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage: Volume 2, 1880-1898.

The first volume takes the Strahorns, tireless scouts for the expanding railroad, through Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, New Mexico, Montana, Washington, and Oregon in the late 1870s. They experience every kind of discomfort, mishap, and peril as their Concord coach bumps down corduroy roads. Adell writes that she was "the first woman in many then unexploited regions" of the West. After she and Pard reach the West Coast in 1880, their lives take another adventurous turn, described vividly in "Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage: Volume 2, 1880-1898," Both volumes are illustrated by Charles M. Russell and others. In her introduction, Judith Austin, coordinator of publications at the Idaho State Historical Society, tells more about the peripatetic Strahorns, who finally settled down in Spokane.

A bride was part of a bargain that officials of the Union Pacific Railroad had not counted on when in 1877 they hired Robert Strahorn to explore and publicize the West. He refused to take the job unless Carrie Adell Strahorn could accompany him. She did, and for the next thirty years they lived mainly in the coach, the saddle, and railroad car. Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage is Adell's account of her roving life with "Pard." Originally published in 1911, and now reprinted—in two volumes—for the first time in more than seventy years, it is the magnum opus of a witty, indefatigable, sharply observant pioneer woman who helped to fill in the map of the West. The first volume takes the Strahorns, tireless scouts for the expanding railroad, through Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, New Mexico, Montana, Washington, and Oregon in the late 1870s. They experience every kind of discomfort, mishap, and peril as their Concord coach bumps down corduroy roads. Adell writes that she was "the first woman in many then unexploited regions" of the West. After she and Pard reach the West Coast in 1880, their lives take another adventurous turn, described vividly in Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage: Volume 2, 1880–1898. Both volumes are illustrated by Charles M. Russell and others. In her introduction, Judith Austin, coordinator of publications at the Idaho State Historical Society, tells more about the peripatetic Strahorns, who finally settled down in Spokane.