"This is a study in depth of the eastern third of the central overland trail system from the Missouri River to the Pacific Coast, that part which followed the Platte River via Fort Kearny to Fort Laramie. ... [The information] is distilled from firsthand impressions of several hundred covered wagon emigrants, representing both sexes and all degrees of human latitude, who somehow contrived to leave something for the historical record. It is the story of their unique collective Platte River experience as it emerges from their own unvarnished journals."--Preface.