An entrepreneur gets to be asked to write a review about an entrepreneur. What a delight! This review will appear in ROUNDUP Magazine, published bi-monthly by Western Writers of America. Coming in February, maybe April, 2015, you can read it here, now:
GORDON E. TOLTON. Healy’s West. Montana Press, Paperback. 287 pages, $20.00, info@mtnpress.com.
You had to be an entrepreneur to go West. From an Irish family brought to America in hardship and enlistment in the Army (perhaps born of shady dealings), John J. Healy took his entrepreneurial spirit to Fort Leavenworth in 1858.
There began 50 years of commercial ventures in the development of a huge area mapped as “John Healy’s Pacific Northwest.” Commended by the author for his trend setting vision and tenacity, Healy’s western tools were not those to which we have grown accustomed. His were buying, selling, mining, organizing, railroading (in both senses of the word) and maybe other slightly fast action. He achieved what so many entrepreneurs do: success and yet shut out.
Tolton’s scholarly work may not thrill to Healy’s heroic nature, but so complete an examination of a significant life all but forgotten is to be commended.