Listening to America aims to “light out for the territories,” traveling less visited byways and taking time to see this immense, extraordinary country with fresh eyes while listening to the many voices of America’s past, present, and future.

We invite you to join us on this journey.

Coming Soon! Following the trail of Lewis and Clark

DISPATCHES FROM THE ROAD

Protesters in Belle Fourche S.D., April 19, 2025.

Dispatches from the Road

While Passing Through a Small South Dakota Town

April 21, 2025 BY Clay Jenkinson

Thomas Jefferson's majestic second home, Poplar Forrest, in Lynchburg, Va. Clay Jenkinson will lecture there at 2:00 pm, May 6, 2025. (Photo Poplar Forest)

Dispatches from the Road

Join Clay at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest Home and Help Kick Off LTA’s 2025 Lewis and Clark Adventure

April 15, 2025 by Editor

Isaac, the day before his Naturalization ceremony in Fargo, North Dakota. (Photo Clay Jenkinson)

Dispatches from the Road

My New American Friend From Ghana

April 7, 2025 by Clay Jenkinson

Dispatches from the Road

Clay Announces Cultural Tour of John Steinbeck’s California

March 25, 2025 by Clay Jenkinson

Clay Jenkinson, doing a historical presentation as Theodore Roosevelt in Santiago, Cuba. 2024

Dispatches from the Road

My Melting Hour at San Juan Hill

March 17, 2025 by Clay Jenkinson

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Videos

Read more +18 February 2025 By Editor in Dispatches from the Road, Video Dispatches, Videos

On the Trail of Lewis and Clark — Video Dispatch

ESSAYS, INTERVIEWS AND FEATURES

Read more +15 April 2025 By Clay Jenkinson in Features

Reflections on America and the Open Road

In a few weeks, Clay will embark on an 11,000-mile trek following the Lewis and Clark trail across the continent and back. As he loads his pickup and prepares to hit the road, Clay ponders what he has learned so far in his multi-year project to Listen to America.

Read more +29 March 2025 By Clay Jenkinson in Features

LTA Exclusive: Historic Portraits of Native American Activist Leonard Peltier

Earlier this year, President Biden commuted the prison sentence of Leonard Peltier. This week, noted “wet plate” photographer Shane Balkowitsch visited Peltier at Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota, where he took a series of historical portraits of the 80-year-old Native American activist. Balkowitsch’s portraits of Peliter are published here for the first time.

Best selling author Louis L'Amour and his son Beau L'Amour.

Read more +25 March 2025 By Clay Jenkinson in Features

The Enduring Appeal of Louis L’Amour and American Western Fiction

Louis L’Amour is widely considered the best-selling author of Western fiction of all time. Still highly popular with readers around the globe, L’Amour has sold over 320 million books, with numerous film and TV adaptations of his work.

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“Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”

John Steinbeck

“Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?”

Jack Kerouac

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

T.S. Eliot

“Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of Habit, the leaden weight of Routine, the cloak of many Cares and the slavery of Hope, one feels once more happy. The blood flows with the fast circulation of childhood. . . . A journey, in fact, appeals to the Imagination, to Memory, to Hope—the three sister Graces of our moral being.”

Richard Francis Burton