My Tour of the Golden West

In 1910/1911 Effie May Johnson (1882-1969), at aged 29, toured the West. Her letters home were published in the Parkersburg (West Virginia) Sentinel, and are reproduced in this short book. She reports her experiences in wonderful and unexpected detail and gives us a female perspective on travelling alone in 1911.

She lived her whole life on the family farm in Boaz (West Virginia), and her knowledge of agriculture shines through in her letters. She asks in-depth questions about farm economics and tells us that the apple crop sprayer her father invented, back in Boaz, can do the work of six men in California.

As she visits her various aunts and uncles, she shares day-to-day details of farm life in the West. She visits Sanford University and Los Angeles as they recover from a quake, and San Francisco, still recovering from the Fire, and writes about a lecture by Stanford University president Dr. David Starr Jordan.

The letters are illustrated with family photographs and vintage postcards.