While traveling west with her family in 1850, a young girl makes a patchwork quilt chronicling the experiences of the journey and reserves a special patch for her pet hen Josefina.

When a disaster claims the men of their wagon train, spunky twelve-year-old Phoebe, her mother, sister, and other women rely on their own resources to complete the journey to Oregon in 1845.

Compares the experiences of Jenny Johnson and Katie Miller as their families move from Missouri to Oregon, one in 1846 and one in 2011.

Recounts the adventures of Our Dog, the dog who accompanied Scottish explorer Alexander Mackenzie on his journey across Canada to the Pacific Ocean and thus became the first dog to cross the North American continent by land.

Learn about the lives of the children traveling during the Westward Expansion.

In 1851 twelve-year-old Sarah is a free Black, happy living with her parents, grandparents, and brother on their own farm in Iowa; but her father has been bitten by the gold bug and wants to take the trail west to California, and after some argument it is decided that the the grandparents will stay on the farm, but the rest of the family will go; the journey will be difficult and dangerous, but if they survive extreme weather, difficult terrain, illness,...