End of the Trail, Part II:  

Odometer reading on the day of departure from Cupertino:

Odometer reading on the day of return to Cupertino: 

6,035 miles.  All that running around.  What did I learn?  America is Beautiful.  Crop selectively.

Lady Bird Johnson, Thank You for Trying

Road Signs: Then, 1849 

The old Way West was only marked by whatever wagon tracks were in front of the emigrants' feet.  The only "road signs" consisted of grave markers and -- interestingly -- a few words of advice and requests to following wagon companies written on the bleached skulls and bones of bison and oxen who died or were slaughtered on the trail.  

Grave markers were nervously and meticulously recorded by a number of diarists.  Three such chroniclers recorded the grave marker of my ancestor, "Captain Pleasant Gray, Huntsville, Texas". It is estimated that there were about ten deaths for every mile of the California-Oregon trail (20,000 deaths/2,000 mile trail).

"Were there no other marks, to guide the emigrant upon his way, the graves upon either side of the trail would be sufficient to direct him with unerring certainty for hundreds of miles.  We have frequently passed from 8 to 15 graves in a single day's drive."  Elmon S. Camp, July 8, 1849

"The means of communication with the trains in front was the "Bone Express." The road was strewn with bones mostly buffaloes.  On these white bones the passing pilgrim would pencil his message, and place it in a conspicuous place by the roadside, an open letter to all to read.  Sometimes the lack-luster skull would inform John that Mary was all right, or a corollary would inform Polly that James was going to take the California road, assuring her that wood and water were better on that route."  George B. Currey, 1853

Most of the graves and grave markers and all of the skulls and bones are now gone.  In fact, there are very few signs that emigrants ever passed anywhere along the hallowed California Oregon Trail.  A few ruts and swales have been turned into state parks; even then one must have a vivid imagination....

Wagon rut swale, Santa Fe Park, Independence MO -- see the swale?

Road Signs: Now 2017

With the invention of the Interstate highway system in the 1950s came a companion:  road signs.  And, it was not long before the American genius for monetizing resulted in a new and bountifully lucrative industry: the Outdoor Advertising Association of America.  

In the 1960s Lady Bird Johnson championed the clean up of junkyards and billboards along highways.  Her view:  "Ugliness is so grim.  A little beauty, something that is lovely...can help create harmony which will lessen tensions."   What a quaint idea... in so many ways.

The Great Legislator, Lyndon Johnson, took up the cause saying "a new and substantial effort must be made to landscape highways to provide places of relaxation and recreation wherever our roads run."  And so, the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 was passed, but with compromise for "those areas of commercial and industrial use."   

These areas of commercial and industrial use are defined by each individual state.  Utah and Nevada are leading the way to a bright future for billboards.  Interstate 15 leading out of Las Vegas towards St. George Utah was a revelation.  First because it's a 12 lane freeway leading into the desert.  Second because of the huge size and height of the outdoor billboards.  These line the freeway, on both sides, facing drivers as they leave Las Vegas, a veritable corridor of giants.  They are placed at convenient intervals such that the occupants of all vehicles can read 8-12 words per billboard, before reading the next... 

Unfortunately, I could not stop to take a photograph of the sight.  However, I was able to dictate into my iPhone the vendors who had paid to advertise on similar billboards in the miles leading up to Riverside, NV.  Along with the advertisers you'd expect -- the Dairy Queens, pizza joints, Chevrons, golf resorts and Marriotts -- are some surprises:

- World Wildlife Fund -- donations, please
- Save the Child Foundation -- donations, please
- Utah State University  -- apply, please
- Bureau of Land Management/Forest Service -- "please don't launch your drone in the middle of a fire" (hey kids, let's see if we can bring down a plane full of water & firefighters...)

Perhaps the biggest single advertiser was Values.com (Foundation for a Better Life) who has a TV and outdoor billboard campaign and who enjoys the "tremendous support of the Outdoor Advertising Association of America and its members, including Clear Channel, Lamar, CBS Outdoor, JC Decaux North America and Van Wagner Communications."

In 2007 Mike helicoptered to to the town of Westport on a peninsula in Iceland near highly productive cod fishing grounds.  Westport was of interest because it had been nearly destroyed by a slow-moving lava flow. The fish processing plant, however, was rebuilt on the last remaining toehold of land upwind of the heliport.  It smelled awful.  When asked about it, the guide responded "that's the smell of money...."

It's a choice "we the people" make.  And can un-make.

No harm, no foul?  I've become expert at "cropping" scenery.  The sky is beautiful.

Red Cloud

Red Cloud, Maypiya Luta, Ogata Lakota Sioux chief (1821-1909).  

Great warrior, diplomat and articulate voice for his people.  

Born near the forks of the Platte river, close to where Pleasant Gray died of cholera.  Spent much of his youth as a warrior fighting neighboring Pawnee and Crow.  In 1866 he organized the most successful war against the United States by an indian nation.  This forced the United States to sign  the Fort Laramie Treaty which mandated that the United States abandon its forts and guarantee the Lakota possession of what is now the western half of South Dakota, along with most of Montana and Wyoming.  

What followed was a long struggle with Pine Ridge Indian Agent Valentine McGillycuddy over the distribution of governement food and supplies and the control of the Indian police force.  McGillycuddy was eventually dismissed.  Red Cloud continued to fight to preserve the autoonomy of his people and his authority as chief.  He opposed leasing Lakota lands to whites, and vainly fought allotment of Indian reservations into individual tracts under the 1887 Dawes Act.  He died in 1909, but his long and complex life endures as testimony to the variety of ways in which Indians resisted their conquest.

In this photo Red Cloud is 77, nearly blind, and wearing a Crow war shirt, rather than one of Sioux origin.

The little airplanes of the heart

with their brave little propellers

What can they do

against the winds of darkness

even as butterflies are beaten back

by hurricanes

yet do not die

They lie in wait wherever

they can hide and hang

their fine wings folded

and when the killer-wind dies

they flutter forth again

into the new-blown light

live as leaves

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

End of the Trail

"Our journey through the desert was from Monday, three o'clock in the afternoon, until Thursday morning at sunrise...The weary journey last night...will never be erased from my memory.  Just at dawn, in the distance, we had a glimpse of Truckee River, and with it the feeling: Saved at Last!  Poor cattle; they kept on mooing, even when they stood knee deep in water.  The long dreaded desert has been crossed, and we are all safe and well."  Sallie Hester, September 6, 1849  

 

Close to the end of the trail for my ancestors, Mike & Sarah Ann Robinson Gray

We Are But Brief Visitors....

Why this quest to re-trace my ancestors' 1849 overland journey from Missouri to California?   Connection.  Connection with the land.  Connection through time.  Connection  in spite of time.   Connection  through DNA.  Connection to the unknown, unknowable, the unbounded.  

A panel at the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center in Casper, Wyoming says it well:

"...Gone for centuries now are the aboriginal people that hunted bison on the plains around you, and trappers that ventured here seeking beaver, mink, and otter.  Gone are the pioneers that struggled to keep their footing as they forded the cold North Platte, and the first prospectors seeking fortune from the land itself.  Gone, but all shared the memory of this place.

Here you can be sure of some things, even though they left no mark on the land.  Here a child sat near a campfire and heard a wolf howling in the cool, damp air of an early summer night, as she wondered what "The Oregon" would be like.  From the ridge across the river an Arapaho warrior saw the first wagons crossing and rode away to share his discovery with the elders of his camp.

Beneath a slate grey sky blowing snow in October 1856, a party of the [Mormon] faithful buried their dead with what frozen strength they could muster.  In 1861 a Pony Express rider hurried his mount westward carrying President Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address.  A month later, the Express relayed news of the start of the War Between the States to an anxious California.

Each of them saw much of what you see today during their fleeting visit to this bend in the river.

We are brief visitors ourselves, like the shadows of those who came before us, yet that does not diminish the importance of what occurred here.  We share their fears of the unknown path ahead, the tears and suffering, the laughter and hard work that accompany the growth of our nation.  Your presence here today affirms the worth of experiences by those long departed from this place."

This blog is dedicated to my ancestors who traversed this continent: Pleasant Gray who died of cholera near present day North Platte NE and Mike Gray & Sarah Anne Robinson Gray who made it to the promised land of California.       

  Mike Gray, who captained the Madison County California Mining Company 
wagon train scouting party at age 22

                          Sarah Anne Robinson Gray, who claimed that the journey mostly by horseback                                  at age 19 was one of the happiest  experiences of her life

Rocks collected from various known sites along the overland trail.
These will be placed on Mike and Sarah Anne Robinson Gray's graves in Colma, California

Red Star Shaman by Arthur Short Bull, Oglala Lakota Sioux artist, http://www.dawnhawk.org/index.html

First Encounters of the Close Kind: Phrynosoma cornutum

Among the many denizens of the Far West new to the emigrants were bison (not a buffalo),  pronghorn (not an antelope), prairie dogs, "grizzle baers" and a tiny creature called a "horned toad" or "horned frog" (actually a lizard, phrynosoma cornutum).  Some, especially children, thought it was an avatar of the devil.   

In actual fact, the reptile is a most charming creature.  My first and only encounter with one happened in 2010 while volunteering at Bryce Canyon National Park.  Scrabbling in the sand near our cabin, my new friend was searching for Harvester ants from a mound nearby.  Perfect in every respect, with tiny sawtooth ridges at his circumference, he had a little crown of horns at the back of his head.  These horns are, in actual fact, made of bone.

Horned lizard around our cabin, Bryce Canyon National Park, September 2010

The horned lizard is perfectly camouflaged.  While it can scurry around, it is generally slow moving and, if you are gentle, will sit quietly in your hand.  If frightened, the horned lizard has the alarming ability to squirt a stream of blood up to five feet from the corners of its eyes and mouth.  To boot, the blood is mixed with a foul tasting chemical.  A most effective defense against most predators.  The horned lizard is now a protected species, suffering from the pet trade, urban sprawl and pesticides designed to kill its primary food, Harvester ants.

While at Bryce, I found an almost perfect plastic replica of a horned lizard.  I named him "Hoodoo" after the odd totem pole-like rock spires in the park and other southwestern areas.  He sits on my car dashboard, beckoning me onward.  He was my protector and mascot on this overland trip.  Hoodoo -- as in Hoo-Doo-You-Luv.

"The curious may here [at the La Bonte river, near Horse Shoe Creek, Laramie mountains, Wyoming] look out for toads with horns."  J.E. Ware's Emigrant Guide to California, published 1848, p. 21

"There were many miles of weary travelling across deserts and alkali dust that would almost suffocate us, to say nothing of rattlesnakes and horned toads and other reptiles and biting insects."  Elizabeth Drusilla Robinson Smith, sister of my ancestor by marriage, Sarah Ann Robinson Gray, 1849

"Here  we found Horn-frogs....No grass or water during the morning drive.  Reached a branch of 'La Bonte.'"  J. Goldsborough Bruff, July 15, 1849  

Hutching's California Magazine, the first illustrated magazine that popularized the West ~1868

The Anatomy of Thirst 

Twenty-six miles southwest of Lovelock, Nevada, the Humboldt river vanishes into the earth.  From there, emigrants faced a 40-mile trek across an alkali desert, a journey of about 3-4 days.  It took me 40 minutes in an air-conditioned SUV, while eating a pint of organic blueberries....

Illustration by J. Goldsborough Bruff, emigrant, 1849

Symptoms of extreme thirst and dehydration:

Sunken eyes, pale flacid skin, dry heaves, spitting bile, painfully swollen tongue, kidney malfunction resulting in extreme burning in kidneys and urethra, brain rupture, hallucinations, death.

"The thermometer indicates 140....I look out over an arid, burning waste....the whole atmosphere glows like an oven."  Niles Searls, June 22, 1849

"Here I saw a number of ox teams of five or six pairs each, lying down in their yokes, -- some of them dead, some of them with their swollen tongues lying extended out into the dust, and moaning and groaning as pitifully as one of our own kind, -- unable to avoid the almost perpendicular rays of the sun now beating upon this spot with a fury almost indescribable."  Carlisle Abbott, 1850  

"The cattle and horses were so famished for water, that it was with great difficulty that we kept them from rushing into the boiling water...one ox belonging to another company got loose and went to a well to drink, slipped and fell and was scalded so badly that the hair all dropped off."  Elizabeth Drusilla Robinson Smith, 1849

"I wish California had sunk into the ocean before I had ever heard of it...that desert has played hell with us...Abandoned wagons, dead cattle, and articles of every description lay strewed along the road between that time and dark; that is, for the next 16 miles I counted 163 head of dead stock -- oxen, mules and horses -- 65 wagons, some of them entire, others more or less demolished, about 70 ox chains, yokes, harness, trunks, axes, and all minor things I did not count, and these only while riding along the road."  James Wilkins, September 9-12, 1849  

"As soon as an ox dies, he bloats as full as the skin will hold, and sometimes it bursts, and his legs stick straight out and he smells horrible....When they are nearly decayed there is frequently three or four bushels of maggots about the carcass."   William Swain, July 20, 1849

"For many weeks we had been accustomed to see property abandoned and animals dead or dying.  But those scenes were here doubled and trebled.  Horses, mules, and oxen, suffering from heat, thirst, and starvation, staggered along until they fell and died on every rod of the way.  Both sides of the road for miles were lined with dead animals and abandoned wagons...The owners had left everything, except what provisions they could carry on their backs, and hurried on to save themselves."  Margaret Frink, 1850

Bad Water & Bugs....

The Humboldt is a muddy brown river about 290 miles long that flows west southwest across a good portion of Nevada.  It is the only natural transportation artery across the Great Basin. Then the water simply sinks into the ground and disappears about 12 miles west of Lovelock.  This left emigrants with a ~100-mile desert trek before facing the verticality of the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada.  

Today Interstate 80 closely parallels the emigrants' route along the Humboldt.  My one day trip from Twin Falls Idaho, to Elko and then Winnemucca in my trusty Toyota Highlander SUV is best described as a tedious ocean of sage brush.  On foot with no air conditioning that would be 18 days for the emigrants.  Their journey was further enhanced with foul water and clouds of insects:

"Today we bid a final adieux to the nauseating Mary River [later re-named the Humboldt by John C. Fremont in 1848].  Never again do I desire to see its poisoning waters, miserable sloughs, parched valleys and bare, painful looking mountains."  William Franklin, 1850

"The road to day has been very dusty and disagreeable -- the [Humboldt] river not far to the right all day.  The traveling on this river is anything but pleasant -- thick dust by day and mosquitos by night....Not a green thing can be seen ...but brown and rugged mountains is the constant scenery." Jotham Newton, 1853

By 6pm I reached Button Point, about 10 miles west of Winnemuccca, a natural spring area used as a camping spot by the pioneers.  It looks inviting enough:

Button Point Springs, just east of Winnemucca Nevada

I had stopped to clean my windshield. As Mike will attest, I hate doing this.  But, facing west into the sun, the bug splats had reduced my windshield visibility to nill.  How could there be so many insects fond of sagebrush?  When I stepped out of the car I was enveloped in gnats...

Bugs on my car windshield, Button Point, 10 miles east of Winnemucca

"Mosquitos were as thick as flakes in a snowstorm.  The poor horses whinnied all night, from their bites, and in the morning the blood was streaming down their sides."  Margaret Frink, July 11, 1850

"...a little water, not very good at that, and Musketoes in any quantity of all sizes, ages, from the size of a Gnat up to a Hummingbird, with their bills all freshly sharpened, and ravinous appetites."  John Wayman, June 27, 1852