Cities of Gold: A Journey Across the American Southwest in Pursuit of Coronado

This new ebook edition includes for first time over 100 never-before-published photographs taken during the author's epic, thousand mile horseback journey across Arizona and New Mexico. It also includes rare and extraordinary historical photographs of the Old West, Native Americans, pioneers, prospectors, Indian pueblos, and vanished landscapes.  

“The Old West’s last glimmers flicker through this piercingly beautiful adventure, an unforgettable saga in which Preston, astride his horse Popeye, traverses the desert and mountain wilderness of Arizona and New Mexico retracing the trail-blazing 1540-41 expedition of Spanish Explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado in search of the legendary Seven Cities of Gold … In place of the mythical winning of the West, Preston unfolds a harrowing tale of loss.” –Publishers Weekly

“The entire book is a sheer pleasure to read.” –The San Diego Union-Tribune

“A Blue Highways on horseback, well worth the trip.” –Kirkus Reviews

“A riveting yarn, with as many turns as a switchback road.” –The Christian Science Monitor

“A fearful, fascinating tale.” –Los Angeles Times

“A journey of historical importance.” –The New York Times

“By setting out with a companion and four horses to track Coronado’s army across a thousand miles of brutal desert and mountain country, from the Mexican border through Arizona and New Mexico, the author is ready to risk his life to try to see with his own eyes, as it were, ‘that moment, 450 years ago, when the peoples of the Old World and New World first encountered each other’ and quickly began the strife-torn redefining of America. Throughout the book, Preston intersperses the original reports and memoirs of Coronado’s adventure with accounts of his own party’s hard progress, making the centuries dissolve into a common, first-person, present-tense narrative. And along the way he records stories of the people and places he encounters, making brief excursions into mining booms and busts, the history of livestock ranching, the impact of barbed wire and windmills, the first mail routes, homesteading, the destruction of the Indian nations, and much more.” –Smithsonian magazine