Unruh does give us a lengthy, thoroughly researched chapter about “the Mormon ‘Halfway House’”-Great Salt Lake City. Nevertheless, those of us concerned with Mormons “crossing the plains” in either direction should become familiar with this essential study of overland travel. The book focuses mainly on travelers to the West Coast (an estimated 300,000 people), so Mormon Trail travel (with an estimated 70,000 people) is of minor concern here. He also discusses the private enterprisers who helped service the overland travel-including Mormon ferry operations. Significant chapters deal with interaction between emigrants and Indians and interaction between wagon trains. He looks at the climates of public opinion that developed regarding overlanding, first for the 1840–48 period and then for the 1849–60 era. Unruh deals with the overlanding experience thematically but in semichronological order. The new “unabridged” paperback version restores those rich and voluminous endnotes.
Because of popular demand, a paperback edition was produced in 1982, which, unfortunately, excluded Unruh’s endnotes. Reviewers termed it “majesterial,” “rich in anecdote,” “sparklingly written,” “best book yet written on the overland journey,” and “a milestone in western historical scholarship.” Unruh died at age thirty-nine, three years before the book was published. Dunning Prize from the American Historical Association and the Billington Book Award from the Organization of American Historians. It won seven awards, including the John H. The Plains Across became an instant standard work in western-trail literature after it first appeared in 1979.
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