[A Young Woman's Diary of a Trip West] by [Western Travel]. Frew, Rachel S - 1909

[Various locations across the United States, including North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Washington, Oregon, California, Utah, and Colorado, 1909. Good.. [59]pp. Contemporary composition notebook, brown cloth backstrip and grey textured wrappers, black titles on front cover. Some fraying and chipping to spine cloth, minor rubbing. A few leaves detached. A delightful diary kept by a young woman named Rachel S. Frew during her journey west by train and car at the end of the first decade of the early-20th century. The front cover of the composition book has her signature, reading "Rachel S. Frew." Frew was apparently traveling with her mother and other friends, and the group set out by train on August 3, 1909, returning to New York on September 15. By the next day, August 4, Frew passes Cleveland and then travels through Minnesota. Soon thereafter, Frew recounts her experiences in North Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming, where she visits Bismarck, the Badlands, Emigrants Peak, Apollinaris Spring, Yellowstone Park, and numerous other named locations in the northern west, where she takes walks and scenic drives, describing the landscape and natural wonders she encounters. By August 13, Frew arrives in Spokane, Washington and then Seattle the next day. At one point, Frew travels to Oregon to see a concert of the Worcester Glee Club and eventually "met boys." She takes a sightseeing tour of Seattle, shops downtown, and visits the grounds of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition; she mentions visiting the California Building, the Forestry Building, and other landmarks of the exposition, which she calls a "fair." At one point, she sees an "Esqamo Village" at the exposition, and she writes: "Saw the sledge & dogs that came from Nome, Alaska & their driver Caribou Bill. The dogs were lovely. Not so Bill." While in the northwest, Frew takes a short trip to Victoria, British Columbia, and spends a couple of pages describing the city. On August 21, Frew leaves Seattle and takes a quick steamship ride to Tacoma, and thenceforth by Northern Pacific train to Portland, Oregon. There, she takes a trip on the Columbia River and takes an "observation car rubbering around Portland" before heading on to California.

Frew reaches the Bay Area on August 25, first Oakland and then San Francisco. She describes her first experiences in San Francisco: "We came near being arrested in San Francisco. We were all so good looking & well dressed that all the people are just crazy to leave us to go to their hotel. We had a crowd like a Salvation Army meeting." She also visits a "Chinese drug store," Golden Gate Park, and other sites in San Francisco, takes a day trip to Palo Alto to tour Stanford, and then enjoys lunch in San Jose. At this point, Frew turns back towards home in the east, next stopping in Salt Lake City, where she visits the Tabernacle and saw Brigham Young's house. Frew describes Salt Lake City as the "worst place I ever saw. Frew also spends a few days in Colorado Springs and surrounding areas, as well as Mushroom Park, Balanced Rock, Pike's Peak, Denver, and more. She describes Williams Canyon in Colorado as the "prettiest thing ever - first thing that has compared with Yellowstone, and William's Canyon surely can." Frew then next travels to Chicago, where she goes to Marshall Fields department store ("very like New York stores but has better heater over restaurant"); then Detroit where she describes a sightseeing tour; then travels through Buffalo on the way home, which seems to have been Catskill, New York. The last entry on September 15 reads, in part, "Took 9:10 train after breakfast to Catskill. Gee but that sounds good." We could locate no ancestry records for Rachel S. Frew in Catskill, New York, which should provide ample opportunities for further research. An entertaining cross-country diary by a young New York woman going to coast to coast and back again in 1909, with quite early accounts of traveling by motorcar in the west.