A Good Use of Public Funding?

Fossil Beds National Monument is a 5 star gem located just west of Kemmerer, Wyoming.  Worth the trip to see it alone.  Friendly, knowledgeable, professional staff.  A facility and landscaping that accentuate the beauty of the scenery.  Gorgeous, informative displays.  No fast food.  No billboards.  Nobody making a buck.  

Proof that America is already great.

Just a reminder.  It's a choice that "we the people" make -- and can un-make.

For comparison purposes, here is today's Niagara Falls which had the misfortune of being "discovered" before the National Park system was invented.  My opinion: the gorgeous falls are ruined, on both the American & Canadian sides, by towering, ugly hotels that just had to be built with a view of the falls.  At Bryce Canyon National Park, the decision was made to position the grand hotel away from the view.  It was controversial but wiser heads prevailed and today there is an amazing, unobstructed view of the rock spires which make the park so wondrous.

View of Niagara Falls, complete with hotel towers and power plant

This was our view upon arrival at Niagara Falls in 2014, complete with a 30 minute wait to park for $40

Big Hill

The truth is that the past fades quickly.  I find that my current self bears almost no physical, psychological or intellectual resemblance to the child I was over 60 years ago.  The same is true for the California-Oregon trail.  All things change.

So, it's a rare treat to see something that looks pretty much as it did 167 years ago, in 1849.  Even better, it happens to be one of the handful of spots that I can be pretty confident my gold rush ancestors actually had the misfortune to experience.  Several years later a detour around "Big Hill" was found.

In 1843 Theodore Talbot wrote that Big Hill "is the greatest impediment on the whole route from the United States to Fort Hall."  It wasn't so much the steep ascent but rather the long, torturous descent into Bear River Valley, some 40 miles west of present day Montpellier, Idaho:

"...at the summit we had to unhitch the teams and let the wagons down over a steep, smooth sliding rock by ropes wound around trees by the side of the road.  Some trees are nearly cut through by ropes."  Eliza Ann McAuley, July 15, 1852

Last resort: lowering wagons by means of ropes

"Superlatives are vain and language weak in an effort to describe the badness of this road; hilly, rocky, sideling, and precipitous.  We let the wagons down the rocks some sixty feet in one place; other places we kept the cattle on but attached ropes to ease the wagons down." John Edwin Banks, 1849
Another emigrant, James Wilkins, undertook the Overland trek in 1849 specifically to document the experience in writings and drawings.  Here is his illustration of Big Hill:

Big Hill by James Wilkins, 1849

Here it is today:

Big Hill, 2017

Continental Divide: South Pass & Pacific Springs

"Sometimes we felt a reverence for all this, especially when we came to the summit of the Rocky Mountains.  We were there on the Fourth of July and the climate celebrated it -- not with fireworks but with a storm right from the North Pole by way of Spitzbergen.  It cut like a knife, it seemed sleeted and was so bitter cold that we had to wrap ourselves in blankets to keep from freezing.  We could not have a fire so we had no hot coffee or tea to brave the climate, but we stopt long enough to inspect the spring right on the summit of the mountain which ebbs and flows like the ocean."

This is how Elizabeth Drusilla Robinson Smith, sister of my ancestor's wife, described their journey through South Pass and Pacific Springs, Wyoming.  Today, driving along Highway 28 at the top of the world, the scenery is sweeping -- as is the wind which practically ripped the car door from its hinge as I got out and which pushed me about as I attempted to photograph the sign at the Continental Divide, elevation 7,750'.  To the north in the snow covered Wind River range, I could see a roaring stampede of clouds and a dark curtain of rain racing towards me, towards South Pass and Pacific Springs, just as it did on the Fourth of July in 1849....

Incoming storm...

"We are now within a few miles of the summit of South Pass.  The Wind River mountains lay cold and silent off to our right.  The country appears like high rolling prairie." Franklin Starr, June 27, 1849

South Pass was the Way West.  The only way.  The only corridor through the Rockies between Atlantic and Pacific "without any toilsome ascents" as John C. Fremont described it.  No toil?  Hmmm...  On the other hand, the passageway is smooth enough:

South Pass, the Continental Divide

Emigrants were poignantly aware of the Continental Divide, both physically and emotionally.  

"After every shower [at South Pass] the little rivulets separate, some to flow into the Atlantic, the others into the Pacific."  Margaret Frink, June 24, 1850

"The ascent is so gradual that the culminating point is a matter of doubt....In a musing mood, I ascended  a high hill opposite our camp, to take a parting look at the Atlantic waters, which flowed towards all I hold most dear on earth."  Alonzo Delano, 1849

South Pass also marked other Divides.  Now the emigrants faced the the second half of their journey.  Gently rolling prairies and flowing rivers were no more.  The roughest travel --through mountains and alkali deserts and yet more mountains -- was yet to come.

Trash on the Trail 

Then...

"The abandonment and destruction of property here at Deer Creek [near Fort Laramie] is extraordinary: true, a great deal is heavy cumbrous, useless articles: a diving bell and all the apparatus, heavy anvils, iron and steel, forges, bellows, lead, &c.&c  and provisions: bacon in great piles, many chords of it -- good meat.  Bags of beans, salt, &c.&c. Trunks, chests, tools of every description, clothing, tents, tent poles, harness &c.&c. I took advantage of the piles of bacon here and had all mine trimmed of fat and the rusty exterior and the requisite amount of pounds replaced by choice cuts from abandoned piles.  Was told of a man here, who a few days ago offered a barrel of sugar for sale, for about treble its cost, price — and unable to obtain that, he poured Spirits of turpentine on it, and burned it up. The spirit of selfishness has been here beautifully developed —Discard effects generally rendered useless: — Camp utensils and vessels broken, kegs and buckets stove [in], trunks chopped with hatchets, & saws and other tools all broken." Joseph Goldsborough Bruff, July 17, 1849

"For many weeks we had been accustomed to see property abandoned and animals dead or dying.  But those scenes were doubled or trebled....Both sides of the road for miles were lined with dead animals and abandoned wagons.  Around them were strewed yokes, chains, harness, guns, tools, bedding, clothing, cooking utensils, and many other articles, in utter confusion. The owners had left everything, except what provisions they could carry on their backs, and hurried on to save themselves."  Margaret Frink, 185

Now....

Near Fort Laramie

Seeing the Elephant: Cholera, Graves & Wolves on the Platte River Road

"'Tis awful when you see an acquaintance at noon well and in the enjoyment of health and learn in the evening that he is a corpse."  Jon Nevin King, letter to his mother, June 16, 1850

Cholera, a disease which was endemic to the Indian subcontinent, found its escape route with the British tea trade in about 1817.  From England it spread to Europe and then hopped across the Atlantic Ocean to North America where it followed the Erie Canal, Cumberland Gap and other frontier trade routes.  By 1849 it was raging at the jumping off points for the Overland Trail and it followed the emigrants all the way out to California and Oregon.   

Cholera is a nasty disease.   Symptoms start without warning half a day to five days after ingestion of the bacteria.  The symptoms are simple:  diarrhea and vomiting of clear liquid -- 3 to 5 gallons of it. The results: sunken eyes, dry mouth, clammy skin, wrinkled hands and feet, labored breath, muscle cramping and weakness, seizures, coma and death.  A man can wake up feeling fine in the morning and be dead by night.  No wonder.

The disease is transmitted by contaminated food or water caused by poor sanitation.  By late May 1849, Fort Kearney, the first army emigrant aid post on the Platte River, reported that over 2,000 people and 10,000 cattle, mules and horses were passing each day.  The river, of course, was used by all for drinking, cooking, bathing, laundry and more.

On June 9 of that year, after a 3-day illness, my third great grandfather,  Captain Pleasant Gray, tough frontiersman that he was, "saw the elephant" (euphemism for experiencing hardship & death on the trail) in far western Nebraska.  How do I know this?  The diary keepers.

Since there was a paucity of road signs and an abundance of death, many diarists assiduously & worriedly recorded trailside graves.  Bernard Joseph Reid, Joseph Sedgley and J.G. Bruff all recorded my grandsire's grave as they passed it within days of each other on the well beaten trail.  Sedgley's account is the most detailed:

Tuesday, June 19.  Morning pleasant.  Left camp....we traveled over a fine road but found neither wood nor water.  We camped at six near the south fork of the Platte...we just escaped a heavy shower; lightning struck within a few feet of camp, tearing up the ground.  Passed the grave of Capt. C. of Texas [a mis-reading of the grave sign, "C." for "G."].

Wednesday, June 20.  Morning cloudy. Wolves are howling about our camp and some have ventured in.  We left camp at seven.  After going two miles we came to the ford of the south fork of the Platte [actually the Lower Crossing of the Platte near present day Hershey, Nebraska].  ....Mosquitoes numerous and annoying.

Lower Crossing, South Platte river near Hershey, Nebraska

Of course, most of the graves along the Overland Trail have long since disappeared, including Pleasant Gray's.  Nevertheless, I retrieved some stones near the Lower Ford of the Platte in Hershey and added them to my collection of trail rocks.  When I get home, I will put the stones on the grave of Pleasant Gray's son, Michael Gray, who made it to California and was buried in 1906 in the Mason's cemetery in San Francisco (later all San Francisco cemeteries were moved to Colma, CA).  

More on graves and wolves....

"We have past some 12 graves & I am told there is a burying ground near here of 300 graves.  If so it must be a general camping ground for near these I find the most graves.  I see some painful sights where the wolves have taken up the dead & torn their garments in pieces & in some instances the skulls & jaw bones are strewed over the ground."  Lucena Parsons, July 18, 1850

Drawing by Capt. J. Goldsborough Bruff, one of the diarists who recorded Pleasant Gray's grave

Is Kansas Flatter than a Pancake?

From the jumping off point in Westport KS, our pioneer ancestors struck across the northeastern section of Kansas, following the Kansas and Little Blue rivers.  Most of the 1849 gold rushers were complete greenhorns, many from East coast cities like Philadelphia and New York, not seasoned frontiersmen.  They were in for a rude awakening.

Modern travelers on President Dwight Eisenhower's famous Interstate 80 which roughly follows the California Oregon trail along the Platte River find the trip boring and flat.  Careening along in a comfy seat, applying no effort whatsoever but a foot to the accelerator pedal, certainly gives one this false impression.   

In fact this has resulted in the American mime that "Kansas is flatter than a pancake."  This theory was "proven" in an article that appeared in the Annals of Improbable Research in 2003.  Scientists measured the topographic flatness of a pancake at 0.957 whereas Kansas was 0.9997 -- considerably flatter.  For full details see: http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/v9i3/kansas.html.

But, a modern traveler who attempts to see the road through pioneer eyes, will quickly learn that northeast Kansas, at any rate, is anything but flat.  From Westport to the area near present day Topeka the emigrant's trail was a continuous series of steep hillocks -- glacial mounds created in the Pleistocene era 600,000 years ago.  Not so boring and flat if you're walking.  Not so boring and flat if you're helping push a 1,500 lbs. wagon up one of these glacial mounds.  Not so boring if you're helping to brake a 1,500 lbs. wagon on the downhill side.

Diorama, Archway, Kearney NE

By the time you reach Topeka some 70 miles from Westport, the glacial mounds give way to rolling hills.  The "trail" along this stretch, now Highway 99, brings to mind the long rippling ribbon used by Olympic gymnasts.  But "the ribbon" seems an endless....

Most emigrants walked, and this was tall grass prairie.  True, the thick grasses were just coming up in spring -- but last year's crop of hard, dry stems, as tall as the emigrants themselves, was still standing.  In essence emigrants wadded through scratchy thickets on uneven ground full of gopher holes and prairie dog colonies.  No wonder the women quickly abandoned their fine dresses and long skirts for bloomers.

Field of Dreams, or walking through the tall grass prairie

A last thought.  In February 1963 President Kennedy issued a challenge to the US Marines and all Americans to demonstrate that the nation was still fit -- a 50-mile walk in a single day.  Apparently Kennedy had found an 1908 memo from Teddy Roosevelt that said that all Marines should be able to hike 50 miles in three days.  Kennedy agreed and upped the ante.  RFK took his brother up on it, completing the hike on a snowy day -- and in Oxford loafers no less.  As a kid I remember seeing a young man with backpack and a handwritten sign "50 miles or bust" trudging along El Camino Real in Mountain View.   Even then I was, in some vague way, proud and in awe of him. 

Okay, the trip along the California Oregon trail is 2,000 miles long and took my ancestors four months to complete (May 6 departure from Westport KS; Sept 9 arrival in Chico CA) -- 125 days.  So, to reach California or Oregon before snow flies in the Cascades and Sierras, you had to walk an average of 16 miles per day (50  miles would take 3.125 days).   This does not take into account pushing wagons up and down hills or sleeping rough every night or crossing deserts without water.  So, the emigrants that made it --> tougher than the Marines!  

Sandy, Julie:  You would have made it.  On the other hand, it's a good thing that I was born in California.

First Encounters: Pronghorn "Antelope"

About 125 miles west of Westport KS, my grandsires' jumping off place, I braked my steed to take a photo of this street sign:

Like so many street names, does this one have a secret bit of history tucked inside?  Well, I like to think so.  Because perhaps it was here, in the tall grass prairie outside Wamego Kansas, that my ancestors first encountered a fleet, sloe-eyed and utterly charming creature, a North American endemic, the pronghorn.

Audubon's illustration of the North American pronghorn

Most people today know pronghorns as antelope -- think of "home, home on the Range, where the deer and the antelope play."  But, it is not an antelope nor a gazelle.  It is the sole survivor of ancient species of hoofed mammals dating back 20 million years ago, one of our few living links to the Ice Age.  

Pronghorns are the second fastest animal in the world, the result of successfully fleeing from the now extinct North American cheetah and Dire wolf.  In fact, pronghorn can easily reach 70 mph and, unlike the African cheetah, they can sustain 60 mph for over a quarter mile and 30 mph for up to five miles before slowing.  

"They came to us like the wind, till within 60 or 80 rods, stop and examine us for a few minutes, then away they would go and come up upon the other side of us....in full lope, like prairie hens on the wing."  W. McBride, 1849 

Pronghorn could easily outrun a horse and rider with sufficient distance to avoid being shot by even the most powerful guns of the day.  This lead to many foolish chases and disappointed hunters....until the emigrants discovered the pronghorn's fatal flaw...

"Antelope are very shy as well as fleet...you cannot slip up on an antelope, but you can excite their curiosity and entice them up to you and shoot them.  One would think they were all females on account of their curiosity...All that is necessary is to hide behind a sage bush, draw your ramrod from your rifle and fasten a red handkerchief or shirt on the end of it and move the red object back and forth.  As soon as it is seen by the antelope, he will circle round it, gradually approaching nearer and nearer until within good shooting range."  William Swain, 1849

Diarist Dr. Townsend bemoaned the "murder" of a pronghorn and diarist Marie Nash secretly exulted when the hunters in her wagon company returned empty handed.  Nevertheless, of the 35 million pronghorn thought to be grazing the prairies and high deserts of the American West there are only about 700,000 left today.  If you are fortunate, you can see them  in the high desert areas of California, Oregon, Idaho and Montana as well as Nevada and Utah.

From "The Prairie Traveler" by Randolph  Marcy