Day 11 -- Rawlins to Glendo, Wyoming -- Friday June 7, 2013

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On road from Rawlins to check out the four Oregon Trail way points that we missed yesterday.  The drive to the first way point, Independence Rock, was beautiful.  The hills are green, antelope are busy harvesting the greens, the sky is blue and the clouds are high.

We are beginning to see more evidence of the four different trails that followed the same path, at least up to the Parting of the Ways and Hastings Cut-off. These four groups are the people going to Oregon, Brigham’s Young Mormon Pioneer Party headed north to Salt Lake City, the people going to California (after 1848) and, a little later on in 1860, the Pony Express.  All of these events are well memorialized along the portion of the trail that we will be following for the next several days.

As we travel north and east from Rawlins we are in the Big Sky Country that is the stuff of John Wayne movies, Louis L’Amour novels, and much Western music.  Whether or not the emigrants in 1850 were as enamored of the romance and adventure as we have become 150 years later is a good question.  
 There are many quotes along the trails on highway markers and in the visitor’s centers that we have visited.  There are complaints of the a tedium and boredom of the same thing day after day – up at daybreak, fixing breakfast, yoking the oxen, then walking mile after dreary mile through sagebrush and sand.  There are few trees, fewer sources for fresh water, little food for the humans and, very importantly, grass for the animals is hard to come by.

We stop first at Independence Rock, a significant way point along the route.  The name comes, according to legend at least, from the fact that a group of travelers stopped there on July 4 and thus the name stuck.  Rock formations such as these are visible for miles across the flat plains and serve as navigation way points for the wagon trains.  As we pulled in to the Independence Rock site we saw a group of people gathered around a covered wagon there, and a number of cars parked along the side of the parking area.  The cars bore Utah license plates, and given the fact that most of the people in the group were dressed, more or less, in 19th Century closing I surmised thy were on some kind of an excursion.  Subsequently, I noted a bumper sticker on one of the cars that identified the group as a group of Mormons who were following the Mormon Trail – presumably to remember how the first Mormons came to Salt Lake.

A much smaller rock outcropping, separated from Independence Rock and a bit further east is known as Overlook Rock because one of the travelers who climbed to the top aid that you could over look the whole area from that vantage point.

Independence Rock was one of the several places along the trail where travelers would often inscribe their names on the rock to record their passage.  Some of those inscriptions are still visible, and some are of more recent vintage.  The soft sandstone is susceptible to erosion by wind, degradation by lichens, and defacement by idiots. 

After Independence Rock we headed for the visitors center in Casper, Wyoming.  As we drove up we noted a log cabin was being constructed on the site with a little help for some modern conveniences.  It would have been nice to see some of the college students from the nearby campus pitch in and replace diesel power with muscle power.  The visitors center was, I thought, rather over the top, but there were parts that were very interesting.  Especially the parts dealing with the conflicts with the Natives in the Area.  These conflicts are becoming more prevalent, at least as the story is being told, as we move east  Since we had recently been in Northeast Oregon, the traditional home of the Nez Perce, I was interested in the story on their banishment to Oklahoma by General Sherman. Like many of these conflicts there are two sides to every story, and people with various points of view are found on both sides of these stories.
One of the stories about the conflict in the area that was told in the museum bays was of the ambush of and army supply train  at Platte Creek.  In this ambush several American soldiers were apparently killed out right, but the commander of the supply train, Lt. Caspar Collins was initially wounded, but succumbed to his injuries.

It seems like the story is repeated over and over: The Army and settlers in the area in which they come into contact with Native Americans try to reach accommodation with the natives, whether it be to pass through the area on their way to Oregon or California, of whether they plan to try to settle in the area.  On the other side, some of the Native Americans are cordial to the people passing through and tolerant, perhaps with resignation of the inevitable, of the newcomers.  Of course, in the course of tens of thousands of people passing through there are confrontations that are not always resolved peacefully.  When that happens there is retribution  revenge.  Neither the Natives nor the the newcomers are innocent in this process.

From then visitors center we continue our journey and spend the night in a campground at Glendo reservoir, a area being developed along the Platte River in Eastern Wyoming.  There are many boats pulling into the area for the weekend as we arrive on Friday night.  We find a camping spot and have a light supper.  The weather is a little questionable and I woke up about 4:30 AM by a pretty loud windstorm and a light rain.  The wind makes a very loud noise as is blows through the trees. I hunker down in my sleeping bay for as long as I can stand it, then I gather up my slightly damp clothes, sleeping bag, and foam mattress and retreat to the van.  I guess I would not have made a good traveler in 1850.

Day 13 -- Ogallala to Ft. Kearney -- Sunday June 9, 2013

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We left Ogallala and drove a bit off the beaten track this morning.  Stop D8 in the Nebraska driving guide is supposedly where the Mormon immigrant wagon train crossed over the hill. The wagons travel pretty directly up and down the on hills because they are prone to tip over if they lean too much.  In this area there are several swales that can be identified marking areas where the wagons traveled over the top of the hill and down into the next valley.  The signage here suggests that even though these trails were supposed to have been made by a Mormon wagon train, it is probable that the Mormons instead used a slightly different route. It is not clear why there is this discrepancy in the information other than differences in personal recollection, local legend, and contemporary documentation. With the exception of some fence lines and the occasional power line this area seems to be little changed from what it would have been like for the travelers in 1850.

As we have follow the trail route along the Platte River there are a number of markers where wagon trails are visible very near to the modern highway.  One of the most interesting is near Sutherland, Nebraska, where the remnants of the trail are marked by round hoops of iron which represent the tires of the wagons that traveled in this area.  As you look along the swales marked by the tires you can look south to current farm lands and, in the distance, some silos. Silos are ever present features in the cornfields of Nebraska - almost as common as the cornfields themselves.  Looking to the north one sees the freeway (Interstate 80) with 18 wheeled “wagons” going a bit faster than a team of 8 oxen.

From here we follow US Highway 30, which in this area closely follows US Interstate 80, to the little town of Gothenburg. In the town park in this beautiful little town is a relocated Pony Express station.  Although the trail guide expresses some doubt that this was an actual pony express station, the man who was sitting in the station assured us that as far as he is concerned this is a genuine Pony Express station.  It might have been used at some times for other purposes, but at one point in it life time is WAS used by the Pony Express.

There was a man in the station filled us in on some of the history of the town: It was originally on the railroad, but there is no longer passenger service to the area.  There are several small or medium size manufacturing businesses there, but the main occupation of the people in the area is agriculture and supporting activities. He told us that there is a crew of 9 volunteers that keep the station open for visitors 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, during the summer months.  That is a lot of hours for those men to spend in a room that is no more than 300 square feet, and most of that is taken up by the artifacts inside. He was more than happy to spend a few minutes with us especially when we asked about the town itself.

The town has pot hole-free streets, lined by well-maintained homes and tree-shaded sidewalks - a sort of classic Middle America small town, but in much better shape than some. It is a place where you can imagine the barefoot boys going down to the river with fishing poles in hand as their little sisters sell lemonade from fruit crate stands on the street corners.   While many of the towns we have passed through look like something that might have been documented by Dorothea Lange or Gordon Parks, Gothenberg looks more like a Saturday Evening Post cover.

We left Gothenberg and drove down US 30 towards the little town of Overton, not even shown on the AAA map of the Central States. A few miles west of Overton is stop D3 in the Nebraska NTP driving guide – the Plum Creek Massacre.  There was supposed to be a marker and the grave sites of the victims of an attack on a Denver-bound wagon train during which Indians killed 13 men and captured a woman and a small boy.  The army responded to the site of the attack and reburied the dead, but there was no sign of the grave in the area. Nancy Morton, the captured woman, told the story in a book published in 1912 recounts the story of her capture by the Cheyenne Indians.  She escaped and returned home and died in 1912.

We continued along IS80 and saw, but did not stop to inspect, the Great Platte River Road Archway that stretches over the highway. Highway construction in the area seemed to have closed all of the off ramps from the freeway – even after doubling back and trying to approach from the east we could not figure out how to get there from the freeway.  Since it was getting late in the afternoon we decided to press on to Fort Kearney.Day 13 -- Ogallala to Ft. Kearney --

We got to Fort Kearny, adjacent to the Town of Kearney (pop. 315) just in time to be too late to enter the grounds.  Luckily there was a camping area immediately next to the Historical Park, so we stayed there for the night.