Book excerpt: This book examines the life of the Townsend family and the events that occurred during the period of 1856–1926 that shaped an expanding American West. Bryant and Julia (Riley) Townsend and their three children were born into an age of rapid change and competing cultures. Witnesses to a century of events that shaped a nation, their lives define the complexities and challenges of incomers who arrived in an expanding American West. From the Gold Rush to the California oil boom, from slavery to female suffrage, from Indian Wars to World Wars, the Townsends lived through violent upheavals, outlasting cities, societal beliefs and entire ways of life. Married in a mining camp in Nevada and relocating frequently, the couple embraced the momentary riches, shattering losses and personal disasters faced by a vast number of immigrants, foreign and domestic, striving to survive in an often-hostile landscape. Their lives and those of their three children, Minnie Edith, Bryant and Persia, form the architecture supporting an examination of multiple facets of the Western experience and are exemplars of the different populations that merged to form the American identity. This volume will be of value to students and scholars interested in American history, social and cultural history and modern history.