The Wide Northwest

Historic Narrative of America's Wonder Land as Seen by a Pioneer Teacher

Leoti L West author Brenda K Jackson editor Jospehine Corliss Preston editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:University of Nebraska Press

Published:1st Dec '05

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Wide Northwest cover

A chronicle of the life of a pioneer woman and teacher.

Leoti L West (1851-1933) left her Iowa home to teach at a school in Washington Territory. Undertaking the two-week journey alone, the young teacher arrived in a Northwest that was still very much a pioneer territory. This book details her teaching career.Leoti L. West (1851–1933) had longed for the opportunity “to be west and grow up with the country.” In 1878, at the age of twenty-seven, West left her Iowa home to teach at a new school in Washington Territory. Undertaking the two-week journey alone, the young teacher arrived in a Northwest that was still very much a pioneer territory. The school that West opened was one of the first in the area and soon attracted students from all over the Northwest. By the end of West’s first term, her original class of seventeen had grown to nearly one hundred students housed in a small schoolroom. In 1881 the school was officially named the Colfax Academy. West taught in Washington for more than fifty years and influenced thousands of graduates. West’s reminiscences first appeared in the Spokesman-Review as a series of pioneer sketches that were later collected and published as The Wide Northwest. Her memoir of her adventures details not only an impressive teaching career but also the pioneer experience of a woman in the late nineteenth century. Brenda K. Jackson’s introduction for this Bison Books edition provides insight into the experience of female educators during the era.

“Reading this book is like having a relaxing conversation with an old friend. It is history, and readers will learn a great deal about the pioneer Northwest. But they will also become enamored of a unique lady whose passion was teaching.”—Dan Hays, Statesman Journal

ISBN: 9780803298583

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 318g

277 pages