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Cottonwood   Listen
noun
Cottonwood  n.  (Bot.) An American tree of the genus Populus or poplar, having the seeds covered with abundant cottonlike hairs; esp., the Populus monilifera and Populus angustifolia of the Western United States.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cottonwood" Quotes from Famous Books



... of general silence and monotony. The old Kinzie house was situated where is now the junction of Pine and North Water Streets. The grounds sloped toward the banks of the river. It had a broad piazza looking south, and before it lay a green lawn shaded by Lombardy poplars and a cottonwood tree. Across the river rose Fort Dearborn, amid groves of locust trees, the national flag blooming, as ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth

... of the Oquirrh range. One after another of the magnificent canons of the Wahsatch we passed, their mouths seeming mere gashes in the massive rock, but promising wild and rugged variety to him who enters—a promise which I have abundantly tested in other days. Parley's Canon, the Big and Little Cottonwood, and most wonderful of all, the canon of the American Fork, form a series not inferior to those of Boulder, Clear Creek, the Platte, and the Arkansas, in the front range ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various

... Wallis?" said the boy. "No, she ain't gone home. She's hiking 'long to our house to see you. The Kid went along of her. See, there—down by those cottonwood-trees? That's them." ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... with roofs of glistening snow. Buttes (hills with level tops) rise like giant pyramids here and there, and one may almost imagine that he is in the land of the Pharaohs. Bench lands diversify the wide plains. Ranches and great flocks are everywhere; armies of cattle; creeks shaded with cottonwood and box-elder; birds and flowers; and golden eagles gleaming in the air. The ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth

... smoke-pipes were batting against the boughs of oak and cottonwood, and snapping the trailing vines. Some other regiments went by another route. The ironclads, followed in hot haste by General Sherman in a navy tug, had gone ahead, and were even then shoving with their noses great trunks of trees in their eagerness to get behind the Rebels. The Missouri ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... stayed by the sea. Here and there at wide intervals on the eastern plains patches of a small pine (Pinus contorta) are found, and a scattering growth of juniper, used by the settlers mostly for fence posts and firewood. Along the stream bottoms there is usually more or less of cottonwood and willow, which, though yielding inferior timber, is yet highly prized in this bare region. On the Blue Mountains there is pine, spruce, fir, and larch in abundance for every use, but beyond this range there is nothing ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... 24th of July, 1857, the people of Salt Lake City were having a grand celebration in Big Cottonwood canyon. They were having a happy time. The band played, the choirs sang, the cannon roared, while the Stars and Stripes waved from trees and mountain peaks. Suddenly four dusty travelers rode into the camp. They brought news from the East, and startling news it was: the ...
— A Young Folks' History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints • Nephi Anderson

... latter compound, too, and much more conducive to health. Continuing to indulge our fancy in cool images connected with fur and its finders, we shall see what contrasts will arise. The blue shadow of a cottonwood-tree stretching over a mountain-spring. By the edge of the sparkling water sits, embroidering buckskin, a red-legged squaw, keeper of the wigwam to the ragged mountain-man who set the traps that caught the martens which furnished the tails that mark so gracefully the number of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... The water was beautifully clear and sweet; quite different from the muddy currents of to-day. Shortly the solid ground had drawn nearer; so that often we passed long stretches of earth standing above the tule-grown water. Along these strips grew sycamore and cottonwood trees of great size, and hanging vines of the wild grape. The trees were as yet bare of leaves, but everything else was green and beautiful. We could see the tracks of many deer along the flats, but caught no sight of the animals themselves. ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... occasionally fenced farm, and the ranches have bar-rooms. Buffalo skins and buffalo tongues are on sale at most of the stations. We reach South Platte on the 2d, and Fort Kearney on the 3d. The 7th Iowa Calvary are here, under the command of Captain Wood. At Cottonwood, a days ride back, we had taken aboard Major O'Brien, commanding the troops there, and a jovial ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne

... out at Cottonwood, you fellers, and lay over a couple o' days, and I'll be along some time to-night, and if I can do ye any good by edgin' in a word now and then, I'm right thar. Folks'll tell you't I've always ben kind o' offish and partic'lar for a gal that's raised in the woods, and I am, with the rag-tag ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... of a dry, uphill ride over barren country Jean Isbel unpacked to camp at the edge of the cedars where a little rocky canyon green with willow and cottonwood, promised water ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... in one of the depressions between the swells a stunted cottonwood, to which he hitched his horse, knowing it would be well hidden there from the observation of the herd. He then advanced on foot. He had heard that the antelope was a slave to its own curiosity, and through that weakness he intended to secure ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... his head from side to side in irritation: "The door was open, yes; the door is shut, yes." Then he swore at the alarmist: "You blamed monkey," he pointed to the cottonwood. "Don't you see how the wind is blowing? That door has been swinging half an hour. The ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... few minutes all the details of the Alamo. He knew already its history. This mission of deathless fame was even then more than a century old. Its name, the Alamo, signified "the Cottonwood tree," but that has long since been lost in another of ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Cottonwood Falls, Superintendent of Chase County Schools, is a thorough Kansan, and a farm product. She was born at Whiting, Jackson County, but when a very small child, her parents moved to Chase and all her life since has been spent ...
— Kansas Women in Literature • Nettie Garmer Barker

... horseback rode in the opposite direction. Their destination was Cottonwood Bend. Two of them were Emerson Crawford and David Sanders. The third was an oil prospector who had been a passenger on the stage when ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... of cottonwood, a chuck-wagon has halted. Many of the boys on the round-up are still asleep, the night herders returning to camp. The cook has started his preparations for breakfast. His wagon has a covered top like a prairie-schooner. The tail-board has ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller

... encamped the soft murmur of the river was in their ears, and the cool, dry wind fanned them quietly as they sat down near a cluster of thick cottonwood to smoke their pipe, chat and prepare for the night's rest. They made a good meal from their mountain sheep, and gorging Terror, threw the rest away as they deemed it ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis

... prairie streams wandering through shallow clefts, aimlessly, somewhere toward the southeast; their course secured by gentle swells breaking into sheer low bluffs on the side next to the water, or by groups of cottonwood trees and wild plum bushes along their right of way. And farther off the brown indefinite shadowings of half-tamed sand dunes. Aside from these things, a featureless landscape—just grassy ground down here and ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter

... around anchoring sage clumps, stood the Elkhorn Hotel. It was built of logs, with a design toward the picturesque and an eye to the tourist class of adventurers who were expected to throng to the opening. The logs had been cut along the river—they were that gnarled cottonwood which grows, leaning always toward the northeast, in that land of bitter extremes—the bark stripped from them until they gleamed yellowly, and fitted together with studied crudity. Upon the projecting end ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... birch. In places it disappeared under the leafy tunnels of aspen groves, their pale silvery trunks and leaves contrasting with the heavy blue-green of an occasional water-spruce. In a narrowing of the valley it was choked from wall to wall by a cottonwood jungle, opening out once more into wide meadows immediately below the neck. Long open parks extended their tongues well back up ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts

... dry bed of a stream through which the water may not have flowed for years. It is sometimes a few feet only in width, and again it may be a number of rods. The rich, alluvial soil often causes a luxuriant growth of grass, cottonwood or bush, which affords the best of grazing and refuge for any one when ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis

... directions through that kind soil, sucking, sucking, grasping, laying hold, drawing to him and his great little needs sustenance material and spiritual. More keen and capable to penetrate were those thready little fibres than the irresistible water-seeking tap-root of the cottonwood or the mesquite of the plains; more powerful to clasp and to hold than the cablelike roots of the rock-embracing cedar. The little new member was so much living sunshine, gay, witching, brilliant, erratic in disposition as he was singular and beautiful in his form and ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden

... added, stopping under a cottonwood that flung a big branch out over the narrow cow-trail they were traveling. "The chances are friend Floyd will be ambling around this way in a day or two," he said hearteningly. "He can tend to the last sad rites and take ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... rode out of a patch of wood which had hidden from the girls' eyes a piece of lowland fringed by a grove of northern cottonwood trees. On the air was borne a deep bellow—a sound that none of the ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson

... cloudless sky the sun's heat poured down in floods. A monotonous locust was chirr-chirr-chirring from a nearby cottonwood ... and in the long hedge of Osage oranges ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... from the cottage the veritable faded hat, copperas-colored pants, yellow countenance and two weeks' beard we had seen the night before, and the same voice we had heard regulating the price of cottonwood squeaked out the following sentence, accompanied by the same leer of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... thousand feet timber is quite abundant. Along the river-bottoms and low grounds the sycamore is found as clean-limbed, tall and stately as elsewhere. The cottonwood, too, is common, though generally dwarfed, scraggy and full of dead limbs. A willow still more scraggy, and having many limbs destroyed with mistletoe, is often found in the same places. The elder rises above the dignity of a shrub, or under-shrub, but can ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... interesting interchange of ceremonies, the Flute priests return to their kiva to prepare for the public dance on the morrow. When at 3:00 a.m. the belt of Orion is at a certain place in the heavens, the priests file into the plaza, where a cottonwood bower has been erected over the shrine called the entrance to the underworld. Here the priests sing, accompanied with flutes, the shrine is ceremonially opened and prayer-sticks placed within, and they return to the kiva. At some of the ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett

... had longings and aspirations. She wanted to marry "a Yankee," and not one of her own kind. She had a little schooling obtained at the small brick shed under the towering cottonwood tree at the corner of her father's farm; but her life had been one of hard work and mighty little play. Her parents spoke in German about the farm, and could speak English only very brokenly. Her only brother had adventured into the foreign ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... Mat Nivers sang about her tasks Beverly and I tried to play together among the elm and cottonwood trees about our little home, but evening found us wide awake and moping. Instead of the two tired little sleepy-heads that could barely finish supper, awake, when night came, we lay in our trundle-bed, whispering ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... the cottonwood and the alders, stepped forward at this moment and prepared to moor the ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant

... one thing worse, one thing more, than a coward. He was a miser, and such a miser that he made himself face danger. You should have seen him running a blockade, with the Yankees chasing behind. He trembled—I tell you, he trembled like a withered cottonwood leaf on a broken stem. Yet he whined against stoking with turpentine, because it cost a little more. I'd 'a' thought, I did then, that the miser was in his bones until the last trumpet. But to-night, back in ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... afternoon, and the sun was hot. It would be cooler under the willows by the river. At Cottonwood Corners, Dorian left the road and took the cut-off path. The river sparkled cool and clear under the overhanging willows. He saw a good-sized trout playing in the pool, but as he had no fishing tackle with him, the boy could only watch the fish in ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson

... Harrison and later Ambassador to Russia; another was a graduate of Yale Law School and of West Point Military Academy; another, one of the Renvilles, had been interpreter for Nicollet; another was an Indian Trader, Joe La Framboise, who was returning to his post at the mouth of Little Cottonwood. He was noted for his linguistic ability and attainments and could acquire a talking acquaintance with an Indian language if given a day or two opportunity; another was a noted Winnebago half breed, Baptiste, whose Indian dress and habits ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... house before which he dismounted. The roof sagged from end to end, and the stove pipe chimney leaned at a drunken angle. Nature itself was withered beside that house; before the door stood a great cottonwood, gashed and scarred by lightning, with the limbs almost entirely stripped away from one side. Under this broken monster Pierre stepped and through the door. Two growls like the snarls of watch-dogs greeted him, and two tall, unshaven men ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick

... point in a box canon in the Big Colorado River and here they found four gods, the Hostjobokon, at work, hewing cottonwood logs. ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson

... country to clear the land of its native trees and immediately replant saplings of certain introduced varieties about the farmyard or along the streets. In this way a forest growth of oak, elm, beech, butternut, hemlock, basswood, and birch is cleared off to give room for saplings of soft maple, cottonwood, and brittle willow. It is felt that the inexpensiveness of leaving the forest trees standing would derogate from the dignity that should invest an article which is intended to serve a ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... Perhaps it was only moonlight. He slipped on and on, and when beyond the branching paths that led toward the house he breathed freer. The grove appeared deserted. At last he crossed the runway from the spring, smelled the cool, wet moss and watercress, and saw the big cottonwood, looming dark above the other trees. A patch of moonlight brightened a little glade just at the edge of dense shade cast by the cottonwood. Here the bench stood. It ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... the flowers have spread A pall of petals over her head; And the little grey hawk hangs aloft in the air, And the sly coyote trots here and there, And the black snake glides and glitters and slides Into the rift of a cottonwood tree; And the buzzard sails on, And comes and is gone, Stately and still, like a ship at sea. And I wonder why I do not care For the things that are, like the things that were. Does half my heart lie buried there In Texas, down by the ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various

... the bank of the Sacramento River, talking with Captain Sutter, in the fall of '49; he remarked, "I have moored my boats in the tops of those cottonwood trees, where the driftwood showed not less than 25 feet from ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley

... This check had the effect of making the savages more wary, but they were still bold enough to make two more assaults before mid-day. Each of these ending like the first, the Indians thereafter contented themselves with shooting all the horses, which had been tied up to some scraggy little cottonwood-trees, and then proceeded to lay siege to ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... Under the hands of its present occupants, the whole surrounding valley has been cultivated to a degree of fertility scarcely equaled by the same number of square miles on the continent. The city proper is laid out in broad streets intersecting each other at right angles, and which are bordered with cottonwood trees, forming a pleasant shade; while in every gutter a stream of water runs swiftly along, with a rippling sound, fresh from the neighboring mountains. Great attention has evidently been paid to sanitary matters, and everything looks neat and clean. The visible marvel of the city is the ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... that a soul is implanted in these trees also?" Similarly, the Hidatsa Indians of North America believe that every natural object has its spirit, or to speak more properly, its shade. To these shades some consideration or respect is due, but not equally to all. For example, the shade of the cottonwood, the greatest tree in the valley of the Upper Missouri, is supposed to possess an intelligence which, if properly approached, may help the Indians in certain undertakings; but the shades of shrubs and grasses are of little account. When the Missouri, swollen by a freshet in spring, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... the last but more yellowish. Their nests are made of a wiry grass compactly woven together and partially suspended to mistletoe twigs growing from cottonwood trees; nests of this type are perfectly distinct from those of the preceding, but when they are made of fibre and attached to yuccas, they cannot be distinguished from nests of the former variety. Their ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed

... foliage and uninviting to the eye, yet keen and wary eyes were scanning their bald expanse, studying every crest and curve and ridge in search of moving objects. Only at the very brink of the flowing waters, and only in far-scattered places along the stream, little clumps of cottonwood-trees gave proof that nature had not left the valley utterly without shade and refuge when the summer's sun beamed hotly down upon the lower lands of the Dakotas. And now only among these scattered oases could even practised eyes catch any ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King

... approaching Talpers's store as the agent spoke. The store was a barn-like building, with a row of poplars at the north, and a big cottonwood in front. A few houses were clustered about. Bill Talpers, store-keeper and postmaster, looked out of the door as the automobile went past. Generally there were Indians sitting in front of the store, but to-day there were ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman

... I kin get the right stuff. Ye see, it ain't every wood that will do it. It's got to be jest right. The Plains Injuns use Cottonwood root, an' the Mountain Injuns use Sage-brush root. I've seen the Canadian Injuns use Basswood, Cedar and dry White Pine, but the Chippewas mostly use Balsam Fir. The easiest way is with a bow-drill. ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... ravine or glade save the brawling of the crystal-clear brook that went dashing and tumbling over the stones of its rough bed, in a mad race to its fall of twenty feet or more, or the crunching of succulent twigs and leaves of cottonwood, or the snapping of dead wood, as old Keno moved leisurely about from one spot to another. Side by side, on a jutting crag that leaned far out over the brook, sat a splendid pair of golden eagles, joyously preening their plumage in the spring sunshine. The birds aroused no special interest in Ralph's ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler

... was a small, white, flat-roofed adobe building, with cottonwood trees growing all about it, and the water from a spring on the hillside beyond, flowing in a little rill past the kitchen door. Inside, on the whitewashed walls, hung the skins of rattlesnakes, coyotes, wild cats, the feet, head and spread wings of an eagle, and some deer heads and horns. ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly

... suffrage meetings conducted at the Winfield, Beloit and Lincoln Chautauquas. Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford of Colorado was the outside speaker and afterwards spoke in four of the principal cities. Mrs. Sadie P. Grisham of Cottonwood Falls was elected president at the convention held in Topeka Nov. 9, 10, 1904. The increase of membership of nearly a thousand was largely accredited to the efforts of Mrs. Alice Moyer, State organizer. Presidential suffrage was again ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... gossamer hammocks that the grass spiders had seamed together overnight were spangled with dew, so that each out-thrown thread was a glittering rosary and the center of each web a silken, cushioned jewel casket. Likewise each web was outlined in white mist, for the cottonwood trees were shedding down their podded product so thickly that across open spaces the slanting lines of the drifting fiber looked like snow. It would be hot enough after a while, but now the whole world was sweet and ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... it? Why, there was a big cottonwood grew on a bluff bank of the creek. One limb hung out over the bluff, over the bed of the creek. He left the running noose on the horse's neck, climbed out on this overhanging limb, taking the rope through a fork directly over the water. He then climbed down and ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams

... poplar, or Cottonwood (Populus deltoides) can be told from the Lombardy poplar by its wider crown and its more open branching, Fig. 41. It may be recognized by its big terminal twigs, which are light yellow in color and coarser than those of the Lombardy ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison

... continue their journey on foot. They spent a day making moccasins, packing their meat in bundles of twenty pounds for each man to carry, then leaving the river they marched toward the northeast. It was a slow, wearisome tramp, as a part of the way lay through the bottoms covered with cottonwood and willows, and over rough hills and rocky prairies. Some antelope came within rifle range, but they dared not fire, fearing the report would betray them ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... number of those that pass on the north side of the river, for it would be difficult to do. Opposite the town, & extending up & down the river for 16 or 18 ms, is an island,[45] it is covered with a fine growth of cottonwood timber, I was struck with its appearance with the mirage which I had seen on the plain, & believe it the same reflected ...
— Across the Plains to California in 1852 - Journal of Mrs. Lodisa Frizzell • Lodisa Frizell

... pencil. But her attention focussed chiefly on the timber limits ranging north and south from their home, and she noted two details: that while the limits marked A-M Co. were impartially distributed from Cottonwood north, the squares marked J.H. Fyfe lay in a solid block about Cougar Bay,—save for that long tongue of a limit where she had that day noted the new camp. That thrust like the haft of a spear into ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... cottonwood fringed arroyo just before moonrise, circling the town, Florrie scarcely marking whether they rode north or south. But Galloway knew what he was doing and they turned slowly toward the southwest. As they rode, his horse drawn in close to hers, he talked as he had never talked before; his ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory

... dinner the next day. I went out that night with Gully and hunted some time, but the snow was a foot deep or more, and a crust had frozen, so that it was difficult hunting. At last we found a large flock of turkeys at roost in the tall Cottonwood timber. I shot two by starlight; one fell in the river, and we lost it, but the other fell dead at the roots of the tree. This was a large and fat turkey. I considered that it would do, and we returned home with it. We had been gone only a ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee

... foundation of brick, with a tall, formal chimney projecting at either end, a broad piazza, and a great flight of wooden steps in front and rear, the latter looking seaward. Like the house of Chaucer's Reeve, in summer it must have been all 'yshadowed with greene trees,' the cedar, the cottonwood, the liveoak, fig, mulberry, and magnolia, growing in the sand or light soil accruing from vegetable decomposition; and as the evergreens predominated, its winter aspect was yet pleasant and rural, notwithstanding a certain air of dilapidation and decay, so common in Southern dwellings that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... leaves. Maple seeds fly by means of double-winged sails which carry them far afield before they settle. Ash seeds have peculiar appendages which act like a skate-sail in transporting them to distant sections. Cottonwood seeds have downy wings which aid their flight, while basswood seeds are distributed over the country by means of parachute-like wings. The pods of the locust tree fall on the frozen ground or snow crust and are blown long ...
— The School Book of Forestry • Charles Lathrop Pack

... meal, and packed, he walked slowly up and down the river bank. But nowhere could he see a better place for crossing than at the spot where he had built his fire. Here a small island amid stream made the crossing seem possible. He found a cottonwood log to which he tied his food pack and canteen as well as his clothes which he took off and rolled up. He fastened Peter to a clump of arrow-weed, then waded out into the stream, pushing the log ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie

... leisurely obeying an impulse to ride into One Man coulee and spend the night under his own roof. And, say what you will, there is a satisfaction not to be denied in sleeping sometimes under one's own roof; and it doesn't matter in the least that the roof is made of prairie dirt thrown upon cottonwood poles. So he sang while he rode, and his voice boomed loud in the coulee and scared long stilled echoes into ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... army," as General Houston called the troops advancing under the command of Santa Ana, the Mexican president. A portion of the Texan soldiers took their stand in the Alamo, an old Spanish mission in the cottonwood trees in the town of San Antonio. Instead of obeying the order to blow up the mission and retire, they held their ground until they were completely surrounded and cut off from all help. Refusing to surrender, they fought to the bitter end, the last man falling ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... control of one man or one corporation, and of course it frightened Carey. He wired his field engineer, who was probably in Inyo county at the time, to investigate. The engineer found my location notices tacked to a cottonwood tree right where I'm going to drive my tunnel, and he immediately reported to Carey that the location was very valuable. Also he wired my name and general description and probably stated that the last seen ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... of the Messiah. All about them was the prairie, its long grass gently billowed by the spring breeze. On the far right, blue in the haze, was a continuous range of lofty bluffs. On the left the waters of the Platte, muddied by the spring freshets, flowed over beds of quicksand between groves of cottonwood that pleasantly fringed its banks. The hard labour and the constant care demanded by the dangers that surrounded them prevented any from feeling the ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... was reflecting whether I would not prefer marriage with Miss Spitfire to this horrible predicament, they drove a stake into the ground, untied me, led me to the stake, re-tied me to that, and piled branches of dry cottonwood about me up ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... journey brought gentler breezes, warmer weather. Cottonwood and magnolia trees grew on the low swampy banks of both shores. The boys passed cotton fields, where gangs of Negro slaves were at work. Some of them were singing as they bent to pick the snowy white balls of cotton. A snatch of song ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah

... the Eastern market. He followed the herd when it stampeded during a terrific thunderstorm. In winter there was often need to save the wandering cattle from a sudden and deadly blizzard. The log cabin or "shack" in which he dwelt was rough, and so was the fare; comforts were few. He chopped the cottonwood which they used for fuel; he knew how to care for the ponies; and once at least he passed more than twenty-four hours in the saddle without sleep. According to the best standards, he says, he was not a fine horseman, but it is clear that he could do everything ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... So riveted was my gaze that I could hardly turn it across the river, where Emmett proudly pointed out his lonely home—an oasis set down amidst beetling red cliffs. How grateful to the eye was the green of alfalfa and cottonwood! Going round the bluff trail, the wheels had only a foot of room to spare; and the sheer descent into the red, turbid, ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey

... brothers and sisters I played about my father's home. Sometimes we played at hide-and-seek among the rocks and pines; sometimes we loitered in the shade of the cottonwood trees or sought the shudock (a kind of wild cherry) while our parents worked in the field. Sometimes we played that we were warriors. We would practice stealing upon some object that represented an ...
— Geronimo's Story of His Life • Geronimo

... duck breeches, banjos, and striped shirts with high collars, they gather beneath the rays of the silvery Southern moon to sing their tribal melodies on the melon-lined shores of the old Oswego; and by day he will study them at their customary employment as they climb from limb to limb of the cottonwood trees, picking cotton. On Sunday he will arrange and revise his notes, and on Monday morning he will sail ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... knocked together out of driftwood and old patches of tin and canvas, but the larger ones have barges, or the hulks of old launches, as their foundation. These curious craft are moored in long lines to the half-submerged willow and cottonwood trees along the bank, or to stakes driven into the levee, or to the railroad ties, or to whatever objects, ashore, may be made fast an old frayed rope or a piece of telephone wire. Long, narrow planks, precariously propped, connect them with the river ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... men lighted a fire. A heavy dew began to drip from the leaves and the blaze was comforting in the gloom that swiftly settled down. Kit had brought a piece of tarpaulin and spread it between the roots of a cottonwood. He did not mean to go to sleep, but his head ached and he was worn out by physical effort and anxious watching. By and by his eyes got heavy and he sank down in a corner of ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss

... party was soon lost in heavy slumber. Not a sound could be heard save the gnawing of the ponies upon the cottonwood bark, which was provided for them instead of hay ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... of the pueblo type, still live in ordinary communal houses of the northern type, which are thus described by General Emory: "They (the Maricopas) occupy thatched cottages thirty or forty feet in diameter, made of twigs of cottonwood trees, interwoven with straw of wheat, cornstalks, and cane." [Footnote: Notes, &c., New Mexico, p. 132. See also Bartlet's Personal ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... long, long lane—down there, a little way past the cottonwood tree, where the lane quits going on, that is where the world stops. You know that is the place because of the awesomeness that comes to you. The old cottonwood stands sentinel over that region of the Great Beyond. So tall and big and still he is that if you ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott

... glow of daylight the place was anything but inviting. The heavy bar, made of cottonwood, had no more elegance than the rude sod shanty of the pioneer. The worn round cloth-topped tables, imported at extravagant cost from the East, were covered with splashes of grease and liquor; and the few fly-marked pictures on the walls were ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge

... possibility of trouble during the journey," he said. "Indians don't like to fight in the snow, especially when their families are with them and their war-ponies are feeding on cottonwood bark. Besides, their head chief will be sharp enough to see that he'll have to treat and not fight if he wants to save the necks of his favourites. Then, as far as the safety and comfort of my men are concerned, everything is being done. ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... thought of our hallowed pilgrimage nearing its end, we rushed like a specter down the road, through winding vistas of giant cottonwood and poplar; rounding a hill we came in full view of Domremy, and, with a final burst of speed, rushed splashing, and all a-thrilled with emotion, into its ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy

... women. Fred Thurman had been known to every one of them. Some one had spread a piece of canvas over the corpse, and Swan did not go very near. The blaze-faced horse had been led farther away and tied to a cottonwood, where some one had thrown down a bundle of hay. The Sawtooth country was rather punctilious in its duty toward the law, and it was generally believed that the coroner would want to see the horse that had caused ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... dense forests. They are scattered among the pines on the lower mountain slopes, in the valleys, and along the streams. The most important of these trees are oaks of many kinds, soft maple, alder, cottonwood, ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks

... want some money?" he asked more kindly, bringing forth his roll as he spoke. "Well here, Virginny, there's one hundred dollars—it's nothing to your Uncle Charley. No, I got plenty more; and I'm going up the Ube-Hebes just as soon as I find my burros. They must be over to Cottonwood—there's lots of sand over there and Jinny, she's hell for rolling. No, take the money; I got it from Wiley Holman and ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge

... side of the river, or divide, dark shadows stood under the few cottonwood trees, motionless and quiet as the grave, their ears strained to catch the first sound of their quarry, and their hands grasping the ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... one might call it—where many household treasures might be safely hidden, if one went carefully, wading in the creek to hide the tracks. She followed Buddy out, and called to Ezra who was chopping wood with a grunt for every fall of the axe and many rest—periods in the shade of the cottonwood tree. ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower

... surrounded by trees, there was one spot where a thin man, like Hopkins or Baldy, could draw his body through and climb a luxuriant cottonwood, whose top have a wide ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis

... Natural History ushered into the scientific world the now famous Hell Creek fossil bed, and found, about five hundred feet from the ashes of our camp-fire, the remains of Tyrannosaurus rex.]For the benefit of our camp-fire, our cook proceeded to hitch his rope around a dry cottonwood log and snake it close up to our tent. When it was cut up, we found snugly housed in the hollow, a nest, made chiefly of feathers, containing five white-footed mice. Packed close against the nest was a pint and a half of fine, clean seed, like radish ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... them to lose time walking backward and forward nursing. They built a long old trough like a great long old cradle and put all these babies in it every morning when the mother come out to the field. It was set at the end of the rows under a big old cottonwood tree. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... is covered by a somber forest of evergreens composed of the white and black pines; Douglas, Lovely and Noble firs; the white cedar; spruce, and hemlock. There are found also several deciduous trees—large-leafed maple, {p.130} white alder, cottonwood, quaking aspen, vine and smooth-leafed maples, and several species of willows. Thus the silva of the lower slopes is highly varied. The forest is often interrupted by the glacial canyons, and, at intervals, by ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams

... another feature that should not be forgotten, and which sets forth a great design. Immense forests of cottonwood and ash are to be seen growing along its banks. These trees are of rapid growth, and afford excellent (in fact the best, with the exception of coal) fuel for steamers. Indeed, they constitute much the greater portion ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various



Words linked to "Cottonwood" :   Eastern cottonwood, white basswood, Western balsam poplar, necklace poplar, basswood, Tilia heterophylla, Populus heterophylla, swamp cottonwood, linden tree, Populus deltoides, lime tree



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