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Review by By David Hendee, OMAHA WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
An Arkansas farmer who went bust as a gold miner in California hit pay dirt as an artist in the high Plains of Nebraska.
But William Quesenbury’s big strike — sketching the North Platte River wilderness on his way down the Overland Trail to his home back east — remained hidden for nearly 150 years.
Quesenbury, a self-taught artist, couldn’t have imagined that his 1851 sketches of what is now western Nebraska and eastern Wyoming would survive, much less be rediscovered and published in a large-format book for the world to see, said David Royce Murphy of the Nebraska State Historical Society.
After a brief, failed fling as a gold miner, Quesenbury (pronounced Cush-en-berry) bounced from job to job in Arkansas and Texas — newspaperman, Confederate officer, politician, art teacher — and lived a life of desperation. He died in 1888 in Missouri.
“The fact that he would be known today for his Overland sketches would probably surprise him to no end,” Murphy said.
Quesenbury’s greatest work was his role as one of the first and most skilled sketch artists to depict Chimney Rock, Courthouse Rock and other iconic buttes, hills and plains of the Overland Trail, Murphy said.
The sketches have been owned by The World-Herald since 1994, shortly after they were rediscovered. They are on loan to the state historical society.
The Quesenbury story and his 71 pencil sketches are featured in “Scenery, Curiosities, and Stupendous Rocks,” published last month by the University of Oklahoma Press.
