It is often flippantly asserted that America has no history; and even well-informed Americans, who have come to appreciate their national history at large, are apt to fancy that, in any event, the West has had a prosaic career, being simply an overflow or outgrowth from the East. But a perusal of these pages will surely convince the thoughtful reader that Western history is not so easily disposed of. It will be found a chronicle abounding in complexities, aglow with life and color, freighted with significance to the continent at large. The chief towns of this historic West have come down to us from many sorts of beginnings, have travelled by differing and devious paths, often encountering curious adventures by the way, until, quickened by modern resources and demands, they have each in its kind come creditably to serve mankind in some useful way. HISTORIC TOWNS OF THE WESTERN STATES [Illustration] HISTORIC TOWNS OF THE WESTERN STATES MARIETTA THE PLYMOUTH OF THE WEST BY MURIEL CAMPBELL DYAR "The paths from the heights of Abraham led to Independence Hall, Independence Hall led finally to Yorktown, and Yorktown guided the footsteps of your Fathers to Marietta."--_Daniels._ At the point where the Muskingum empties into the Ohio, the River Beautiful, across whose waters the Ohio hills look tenderly away into the distances of West Virginia, there was sown, in 1788, the tiny seed for the development of the Northwest Territory. Here, on the memorable seventh of April, landed forty-eight New England pioneers; here stayed the keel of the second _Mayflower_, bearing as her burden not only the men whose names have become immortal in American history, but, more than these, the Ordinance of 1787 with its momentous articles of compact--an ordinance ranking "next to the Declaration of Independence in the establishment of Constitutional liberty in the United States." Here was founded that other Plymouth, Marietta, the brave little gateway through which the nation's civilization journeyed onward from the Atlantic seaboard to the fallow empires of the West. [Illustration MARIETTA.]