Stagecoach
Wells Fargo and the American West
Preface
Any account of Wells Fargo & Company involves a history of the more dramatic aspects of the Old West. There is, however, another story that is quite interesting in its own right and certainly more relevant to our times.
The company's operations bisected almost all social, cultural, and economic activities in the trans-Mississippi West and were conducted in such diverse physical landscapes as the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Great Basin Desert, the wet Northwest, the dry Southwest, the Sierra Nevada, and the Pacific coast.
Wells Fargo's early history meandered through and illuminated the booms and busts of gold and silver mining rushes, the collection and distribution of mail, the rise and failure of banks, the Pony Express, over-land staging, the building of the transcontinental railroad, the Civil War and the Indian wars, the violence of robbers and gunfighters, the development of agriculture, the rise of capitalist entrepreneurs, and the regulation and disbanding of monopolies. In fact, more than any government agency or any other commercial enter ... read full excerpt from: Stagecoach: Wells Fargo and the American West ebook
