Back in Chapter 9 Mark Twain's narrative of his journey west had entered into Wyoming, approaching the Rocky Mountains. He then spent two chapters devoted to the notorious Jack Slade, division superintendent and vigilante. He begins chapter 12 by describing a Mormon wagon train he passed en route. He reaches the top of the Rocky Mountains at South Pass and then descends the west side eventually arriving in Salt Lake City. I had intended to display an animated map of this journey, as I did with the previous chapters, But I didn't find a suitable base map to use.

I have started mapping significant Mark Twain locations from his book Roughing It. The first chapter is merely a dismal riverboat ride from St. Louis to St. Joseph Missouri. I made my first attempt at animated mapping in the video for that chapter. But Chapter 2 has Sam traveling the Overland Stagecoach line out of St. Joseph, across Kansas.  He does not mention any stations by name but does say they stop every ten miles or so. My Googling around for information on these stations led to listings of the Pony Express Stations.

I've been rather enjoying myself a bit these last two weeks. I've found a way to combine several of my personal interests into one project, Geography, Web Site design, and Mark Twain. I've been blogging about Twain for a couple of years now, based around my readings of his books while in the guise of SLClemens, an avatar in the virtual world of Second Life. For some time I've been curious about adding dynamic maps to web pages.