Lander, WY

2021-08-13 – The Oregon Trail caravan … Day 16 – Traveling from Lander, WY to Fort Bridger, WY

We move on again, just like the wagons on the Oregon Trail…

We traveled across many miles of Wyoming landscape…

We are driving through “South Pass”. This is where most of the emigrants passed through the Rocky Mountains. The “pass” is about 35miles wide, and it crosses the Continental Divide at about 7,412 feet elevation, the lowest pass in this area of the Rockies…

So it’s all downhill from here…

The terrain changes continuously…

The terrain changes continuously…

The terrain changes continuously…

We crossed the Big Sandy River…

And we crossed the Little Sandy River…

And the terrain continues to change…

We stopped for lunch at Little America. There are hundreds of billboards on each direction of the freeway advertizing this place. Wall Drug, it isn’t. But it is a large gas station, a motel, and a restaurant…

We made a slight detour to the town of Granger to see the old stagecoach station and Pony Express station…

The stage station is in pretty good shape…

The Pony Express station not so much…

We continued on. The terrain is still changing…

We arrived at the RV Park.

Next to the RV Park is Fort Bridger State Historic Site

Again, I’m not a big fan of forts, but this did have some interesting things… The first schoolhouse in Wyoming!

The small building on the end is the first schoolhouse…

I particularly enjoyed the whitewashed hand cut limestone walls…

These stone buildings are original to the the mid 1800s…

The wooden buildings are not original… Wood is such a terrible building material…

We enjoyed seeing the bear trap…

This is the guardhouse, complete with an office and the jail cells…

The main building is now the museum…

Here is a detail of the limestone walls…

What I WAS interested was the roadside cabins… This is a restored example of typical roadside cabins that were all along the Lincoln Highway, offering motorists a place to spend the night…

The Lincoln Highway is one of the earliest transcontinental highway routes for automobiles across the United States of America. Conceived in 1912 by Indiana entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, and formally dedicated October 31, 1913, the Lincoln Highway ran coast-to-coast from Times Square in New York City west to Lincoln Park in San Francisco, originally through 13 states.

The first officially recorded length of the entire Lincoln Highway in 1913 was 3,389 miles. Over the years, the road was improved and numerous realignments were made, and by 1924 the highway had been shortened to 3,142 miles.

The name of the Lincoln Highway was changed in 1926, as it became part of U.S. Route 30 from Pennsylvania to Wyoming. We on the Oregon Trail caravan have been following the route of US 30 for most of our trip…

Note that each cabin had a carport. Not only did this give you a parking space, but there were no common walls between rooms…

Note that this is not a “motel”. The first motel was the Motel Inn (originally known as the Milestone Mo-Tel), located in San Luis Obispo, California, was the first motel in the world. It opened on December 12, 1925, and closed in 1991. The building is now the administrative building of the Apple Farm Inn hotel next door. I lived just down the street from the Motel Inn whilst I was a college student in San Luis Obispo…

We returned to the Villa and happy hours ensued.

An enjoyable time was had by all…

August 18, 2021 0

2021-08-12 – The Oregon Trail caravan … Day 15 – Lander, WY

We had a big variety of tours and sights today. We started at the Eagle Bronze Foundry and Gallery…

We were given an extensive tour of the foundry, with all the steps and processes explained, from the artist’s concept in a small model, which is scanned into a special 6d computer model, to full size mockups, to sectioning the mockups to 30″ x 30″ sections, adding clay and wax, and casting the bronze at 2100 degrees… It is an amazingly complex process…

Examples of foam and latex molds…

The sand castings, with the wax melted out, ready to cast the bronze…

Completed castings being reassembling into the finished monument…

Coloring, adding patina, and finishing…

It was fascinating tour! It is an amazingly complex process…!

And then we moved on. We went to Sinks Canyon State Park. This is the site of the “vanishing river”…

The river flows through these rocks, into a shallow cave, and the water disappears… This is called “The Sink”…

We found that the water falls through cracks and fissures underground, until about two hours later it reappears in a pond about a quarter mile away…

As we walked we marveled at these shear rock canyon walls…

We found the pond (The Rise). It was peaceful and serene…

One other thing that flows underground and comes up in this pond are Rainbow Trout!

These trout are 16-24 inches long!

Since no fishing was allowed we drove back to downtown Lander. It is a typical small downtown, struggling to stay viable…

We had lunch at Middle Fork, a nice little restaurant downtown. It was barely not too hot to sit outside…

After lunch we drove a few miles north to the Sacajawea Cemetery…

Sacagawea (/ˌsækədʒəˈwiːə/ or /səˌkɑːɡəˈweɪə/; also spelled Sakakawea or Sacajawea; May c. 1788 – December 20, 1812 or April 9, 1884) was a Lemhi Shoshone woman who, at age 16, helped the Lewis and Clark Expedition in achieving their chartered mission objectives by exploring the Louisiana Territory. Sacagawea traveled with the expedition thousands of miles from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean, helping to establish cultural contacts with Native American populations and contributing to the expedition’s knowledge of natural history in different regions.

Note that there is uncertainty as to when she died. She was either 24 or 95. Accordingly, there are two burial sites to be found… This one in Wyoming, and another in South Dakota. You pick…

We drove back to the VIlla. Lots of nice countryside here…

This evening we joined many other Airstreamers for Happy Hours while we watched the sunset…

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

August 17, 2021 0

2021-08-11 – The Oregon Trail caravan … Day 14 – Evansville, WY to Lander, WY

We move along today to see some unique sites along the Oregon Trail…

But first we pass some rural, tranquil neighborhoods…

We saw some red bluffs; most emigrant diarists mentioned them along the way…

We stopped at a pull-out to look at the Pathfinder Reservoir. We also found this lovely estate development. Homesites 7-20 acres, from $11,000 per acre. Bargain!

Here is the non-gated entry…

Here is the Pathfinder Reservoir

Here is the Villa…

As we were leaving the pull-out three other Airstreams came by. About a mile down the road we had a construction zone, with very slow traffic, allowing us to get some good pictures…

Our main stop for the day is Independence Rock. A big ol’ rock in the middle of the prairie… Of course we stopped to take a look…

The significance of the rock has many facets. First of all, walking 20 miles per day across the endless prairie was very monotonous. Anything unusual caught the emigrants’ attention. This big rock certainly is unusual. Also, the emigrants’ goal was always to reach Independence Rock by Independence Day – July 4. It was important for the emigrants to celebrate the 4th, and this area gave the emigrants space, water, and game to rest for a day or two. Importantly, Independence Rock is just about one half way between Independence, MO, where most of the emigrants set off to Oregon City, OR. Finally, many of the emigrants painted, scratched, or chiseled their names into the rock. Historians have been all over the rock to collect the various signatures and to correlate them with known emigrants and their diaries…

We walked around and onto the rock looking for names. No one we know… Most of the painted or scratched names have been worn away by the weather…

There is a grave here, fenced off…

“Look! Over there!”

We walked ALL AROUND the rock…

On the opposite side of the rock are various placques placed by various historic societies and donors. There have been several Boy Scouts of America “Camporees” here over the years, so BSA also has many placques…

After enjoying the rock we walked back to the entrance. We stopped to watch these birds in a mud nest under the eaves of the visitors center…

We returned to the Villa and drove about four miles down the road to Martin’s Cove. This is an historic site ownered and leased by the Mormon Church. The site commemorates the caravans of Mormons heading to the Great Salt Lake Valley. They could not afford covered wagons so they used hand carts to carry their worldly possessions. They endured many hardships, and up to as many as 25% of them died along the trails.

One feature of the site is the Devil’s Gate – a gap in the rock that allowed the wagons and handcarts through these mountains…

There is also a reproduction of an early fort that the Mormons used to protect themselves from the extreme cold. Portions of the fort were burned to keep the people warm…

And so we traveled on. Another landmark helping the emigrants find their way is the Split Rock. The trail turned here as it approaches the Rocky Mountains to the west. Split Rock pointed the travelers to the South Pass, the easiest way through the Rockies…