Introduction - with some reminiscence

The swath on the first hill is the Hastings Cut-Off

For many years I have been interested in the National Trails Project that documents the trails that people followed as they populated and explored the portion of the United States west of the Mississippi River.  A few years ago, with my old pal, now deceased, Wirt Kerr, we followed the Butterfield Stage Route as closely as we could from San Francisco to Eastern New Mexico.  I have followed much of the Anza Trail in California, and portions of the California trail through Nevada and California.  As I reach my 70th birthday in less than two months I plan to continue this exploration (if that is the right word) of as many of these documented trails as possible - this year the Oregon Trail starting in Astoria and ending in Kansas City. But that story will come later. 

In September of 2012 my friend Rory Hayden and I drove up to Gooding, Idaho, to visit our old high school friend Duke Morton. Duke reigns as the Mayor of Gooding so Rory and I decided to drive up there to spend a couple of days with Hizzoner (As Herb Caen used to put it).  On the way back we stopped at the California Trail visitors center, just off Highway 80 near Elko. Here is a link to some of the photos along the way.

The visitors center is a very neat museum  actually not a museum since they have very few, if any, artifacts.  Rather they have are a number of dioramas depicting travel in the mid 18th century.  We were directed by the resident Ranger to a side road near the railroad right-of-way where he said we could see the trace of an old wagon trail.  We drove over there where I took the picture above.  The Hastings Cut-off was one of the not-so-shortcuts to California that turned out to be pretty disastrous to the folks that chose that way.

The Hastings Cut-off, one of the alternative routes to California after the Oregon trail more or less fell apart at South Pass, is described in Vol. II of Will Bagley'' Overland West opus, With Golden Visions Bright Before Them: Trails to the Mining West 1849-52.  This route became infamous as the route the Donner Party took on their way to California in 1846. The Hastings cut-off was difficult, and often fatal, for both man and beast. Travelers report seeing oxen carcasses all along the road.  In spite of its bad reputation, gold fever and crowded conditions on the other cut-offs and short-cuts encouraged some to try the Hastings Route. One man who observed a veteran of the Hastings Cut-Off who "had left all that he had on the desert even to his coat, shoes, butcher knife, etc.. He got so weak they were two(sic) heavy for him to carry.  He had nothing on but his shirt and pantaloons and his feet wrapped in rags." (Bagley, pp. 47-48) And he had not yet seen the elephant.