Newbury Town Library

Astoria, John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's lost Pacific empire : a story of wealth, ambition, and survival, by Peter Stark

eng

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history

Astoria

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870956704

by Peter Stark

John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's lost Pacific empire : a story of wealth, ambition, and survival

At a time when the edge of American settlement barely reached beyond the Appalachian Mountains, two visionaries, President Thomas Jefferson and millionaire John Jacob Astor, foresaw that one day the Pacific would dominate world trade as much as the Atlantic did in their day. Just two years after the Lewis and Clark expedition concluded in 1806, Jefferson and Astor turned their sights westward once again. Thus began one of history's dramatic but largely forgotten turning points in the conquest of the North American continent. Astoria is the harrowing tale of the quest to settle a Jamestown-like colony on the Pacific coast. Astor set out to establish a global trade network based at the mouth of the Columbia River in what is now Oregon, while Jefferson envisioned a separate democracy on the western coast that would spread eastward to meet the young United States. Unfolding from 1810 to 1813, Astoria is a tale of high adventure and incredible hardship, drawing extensively on firsthand accounts of those who made the journey. Though the colony itself would be short-lived, its founders opened provincial American eyes to the remarkable potential of the western coast, discovered the route that became the Oregon Trail, and permanently altered the nation's landscape and global standing

adult

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John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's lost Pacific empire : a story of wealth, ambition, and survival