Americans in the mid-1840s, facing a nearly empty continent stretching to the west, saw it as their natural right, their "Manifest Destiny," to annex this land to the United States. The young country traveled to its "destiny" over a rough, rutted, dangerous road: the Santa Fe Trail. William Y. Chalfant tells the story of this road - stretching eight hundred miles from Independence, Missouri, to Santa Fe, New Mexico - during the pivotal period of the...