Lawrence Historian Explores America's "Fictitious Frontier" in Main Hall Forum

APPLETON, WIS. -- The admonition "don't believe everything you read" is hardly a modern day axiom. Famed explorers Lewis and Clark may have led the best known expedition across America's western wilderness, but long before their 1803-1806 trip, others were describing treasurers that lay beyond the Mississippi River, albeit fictitiously.

Historian Rex Myers examines the long tradition of apocryphal writing about the American West Tuesday, May 7 in the Lawrence Main Hall Forum, "Before the Corps: Pre-Lewis and Clark Efforts to Explore the West in Fact and Fiction." Myers' address, at 4:30 p.m. in Main Hall Room 202, is free and open to the public.

Focusing on Don Alonso DeCalves' book, "New Travels to the Westward, or, Unknown Parts of America...," Myers will examine the history of fabricated stories of America's unchartered frontier before Lewis and Clark's first-hand account and explore the fictitious world created by DeCalves and others, who spun tales of great wealth, mighty rivers and mountain ranges and Indian tribes they never actually encountered.

Myers, an instructor in the history department at Lawrence, is the author of eight books, including "Montana and the West." He earned his bachelor's degree in history at Western State College of Colorado and his Ph.D. in history at the University of Montana.