Tuesday 5 August
Another slow start which we are ruing once more as we drive through the darkness of evening and storms. But we did make good use of the daylight hours today, visiting three sites on the Oregon Trail, the route which pioneer settlers, aka emigrants, travelled as the American nation expanded west.
Our first site was Scotts Bluff National Monument, in Nebraska, the goal for which we had driven so far south late last night. Scotts Bluff and the neighbouring Mitchell Pass were important landmarks on the settlers' westward routes. There were three main Trails from the more populous eastern states to the west. All three trails passed this point as the settlers followed the course of the Platte River; its northern branch the North Platte River flows just north of Scotts Bluff and Mitchell Pass.
The first trail was used in the early 1800s, after a fur trapping party plotted the route by travelling from Astoria, at the mouth of the great Columbus River in Oregon, to St Louis, Illinois, in 1810 (or possibly 1814, I can't quite remember). It was called the Oregon Trail. Beginning in Independence, Missouri (just east of the border with Kansas), this route took the settlers to the north-western corner of the United States, right to the edge of the Pacific Ocean. Many of these settlers travelled with 'prairie schooners', (ships of the grassland plains), also known as covered wagons. Each wagon was towed by several oxen, yoked in pairs. The cattle had a very hard time of it, and heavier items were discarded along the way as the settlers fought to enable their oxen to continue on. One settler wrote of finding discarded books beside the road, which he read before swapping them at the next pile of cast aside books he found, the 'longest library' in the world. Settlers generally walked beside their covered wagons to save the oxen's strength. Many oxen died along the way of sheer exhaustion; meanwhile, the settlers themselves frequently died of cholera, which plagued the wagon trains in the plains.
The second route was the Mormon Trail, along which Brigham Young led the first wave of Mormons (now known as the Latter-day Saints) from Nauvoo, Illinois, to their final stop in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Mormons made attempts to settle at various locations along their Trail, including Independence (which their prophet Joseph Smith proclaimed to be the site of the future Zion). They constantly found themselves 'run out of town' when the established, Christian settlers found out about the Mormons' polygamous practices and heretical doctrines. Many of the Mormons travelled with only 'prairie carts', which were somewhat like hand-towed wheelbarrows, because they had run out of the money needed to purchase prairie schooners as they fled persecution almost everywhere they went.
The third trail was the California Trail, which followed the Oregon Trail until somewhere in Wyoming, where it branched south to the goldfields. This trail was the purview of the '49ers, whose lust for gold was sparked with news of a gold strike in the California hills in 1848. (We'll have more to learn of the '49ers when we visit Death Valley National Park in California near the end of our trip.) All of a sudden, Oregon's fertile fields were no longer the draw they once had been. Westward expansion had moved south.
Scotts Bluff is a magnificent sandstone outcrop which juts upwards from the plain. It is named after a fur trapper, Hiram Scott, who was deserted here to die by his fellow trappers after being injured and rendered unable to ride a horse. We learnt of the history of the location at the Visitors' Centre, and Sam, Abi and Anna completed Junior Ranger booklets to earn another badge each. Then we drove the winding road to the top, scaring me out of my wits. At the top of the Bluff, we walked a trail that encircled the flat mesa-like top. Samuel clung to my hand and we distracted each other from the prospect of the steep drop off by counting the spiky cactus we saw at the side of the path. Scotts Bluff was also the first place we saw the spiky yucca plants. The road down was yet more frightening; as this time, we were in the cliff-side lane, and I was on the cliff side of the car (left-side driving is officially a nightmare!). I found myself leaning over to Mr Jackson's elbow in a subconscious effort not to tumble over the precipice, even as I stuck my hand out the open window with the camera to take photos of the stirring view.
We left Scotts Bluff National Monument by driving through Mitchell Pass to the west, and continued west across the state border into Wyoming (our 8th state) for our next stop at Fort Laramie. This Fort was first built in 1834 as Fort William, then rebuilt as Fort John in 1841, and finally purchased by the army and rebuilt once more as Fort Laramie in 1849. It provided a trade store where settlers could replenish their stores and fur trappers could trade their buffalo and beaver furs. Once the army moved in, it housed soldiers whose main occupation was upkeep of the fort, although they were ostensibly in the area to help maintain peace with the local Indians, who were increasingly unsatisfied with the peace treaties they had been forced into accepting, and which had been continually broken by the American settlers who persisted in settling on Indian treaty lands. The fort was never attacked by Indians, and it never had to protect itself with walls, either, being open on all sides to the prairie lands.
I took Anna, Sam and Abi around the fort to complete their Junior Ranger booklets, whereupon they received their third badge and were officially sworn in as Junior Rangers and received their cloth "Explore. Learn. Protect." badges. This is the pledge they swore with the Ranger:
"I promise to discover all I can
about my National and State Parks
and to share my discoveries with others.
I pledge to preserve and protect
my National and State Parks
for the enjoyment of future generations."
I guess it applies to our national and state parks in Western Australia as well.
Meanwhile, Mr Jackson explored with Joshua, starting at the soldier's bar talking to a retired soldier about local military history records. He told them the story of one soldier from the fort who had been shot in the arm and leg during the Civil War, and bayonetted, losing one ear, in the same war. Then, when he was posted out to Fort Laramie, he was shot in the same arm by an Indian arrow and was told he couldn't shoot with that arm any more so would have to be discharged from the army. Consequently, he taught himself to shoot with his left arm, retained his position in the army, and later died of old age after retiring from the army and becoming a farmer in the local area. Joshua commented, "Imagine! That much devotion to your country!"
We left Fort Laramie with brooding storm clouds on the horizon, and drove into a lightning and thunder storm. A ranger at the fort had told us about some amazingly deep wheel ruts preserved in stone nearby from the metal rims of the prairie schooner wheels as they cut deep into the soft sandstone they traversed on the Oregon Trail. We drove to them but had to wait a while in the car before we could emerge, while the heavy rainstorm became a hail storm. Suddenly the sun emerged from clouds and we hiked a little way to see two separate sets of wheel ruts, much more impressive than those we saw near the Snake River in north east Oregon four years ago. (Oh, how I wish we could post photos on this blog but it's just not happening at the moment. Sorry.)
That was the last of our tourist stops for the day. It was 5:30pm and we still had around four hour's drive to Sheridan on the I-25 where we stayed the night. Most of the four hours were spent enjoying the sky show that God was putting on. There were some magnificent lightning strikes, and at one time sheet lightning was surrounding us. I have never seen sheet lightning up close before, only on the horizon, and it was amazing to have the whole countryside around us lit up "like daylight" as Anna commented. Once again the kids fell asleep in the car and had to be transferred to beds when we arrived at the motel. They seem to be getting used to it now.
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