Item 28 is a circa 1910 promotional broadside for Edmonton, Alberta. It states, The Seton Smith Co. Real Estate Brokers and Auctioneers Edmonton, Alberta, Canada...Thousands of Acres from $7.00 to $25.00 per acre...Climate the Finest in Canada. Climate the finest in Canada? It was something like 30 degrees below zero there the other day, which leads to the question: what's the climate like in the rest of Canada? $125.

Louis Tarascon proposed the building of a wagon road from the Missouri to the Pacific in 1824. The road would be built sixty feet wide (to accommodate passing lanes?) and would include bridges and ferries along the way. It was to be built by the Missouri and Columbia Road Company, which would receive 40 miles of land on each side of the highway for its effort. The government would be responsible for dealing with any pesky Indian claims. Of course this road was never built. It must have appeared outrageous at the time, less than two decades after Lewis and Clark returned from their pioneering exploration of the West. It would be over four more decades before the first transcontinental route would be completed, and that would be a railroad not a wagon road. Still, one wonders what the history of the American West would be had this foresighted project come to pass. What if those who risked their lives and all their possessions to make it to Oregon, California, and Utah a couple of decades later had had a superhighway waiting for them? The West would undoubtedly have been "won" much sooner then it was. The pamphlet is Petition of Lewis A. Tarascon, (and others,) Praying the Opening of A Wagon Road, from the River Missouri, North of the River Kansas, to the River Columbia. December 13, 1824. Item 161. $450.

Michael Brown Rare Books may be found on the internet at www.mbamericana.com and reached by phone at 215-387-9808.