Brattlecast #90 - Go West!

Ken takes a journey from West Street out to Western Massachusetts and finds a bonanza of early material on the Westward expansion. Not long after the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition, there were magazines selling the idea of missionary work, opportunity, and adventure in the Pacific Northwest, brochures encouraging people to settle and farm in the Midwest, and travel posters created by railroad companies to promote the newly created National Parks. These engaging pieces of ephemera can give us a new perspective on how it might have felt to live through this often romanticized era of American history.