A Photographic Look at the Old West That Is Alive and Well in California It was a thrilling time, when wagon trains and stagecoaches raced to the California goldfields – on the trail where the dust and campfire smoke met. In the shadow of the towering Sierra Nevada, the real Wild West was born. And it still lives today, in the extraordinary people who pack mule-strings into the mountains, race over mountain passes on horseback while recreating the Pony Express, and drive cattle out of the high country each fall. It lives on beneath the massive wheels of the twenty-mule-team wagons and teams of draft horses pulling historic wagons over a mountain pass. Sit back and enjoy this fascinating journey as the Old West comes alive in a book filled with unique western images, inspiring stories from the trail, memorable cowboy poetry, and some western history.