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…
Short stories today. I woke up Monday with a sore throat; Lynda has had a cold since Saturday. We stayed in all day…
We did manage to get outside and walk a bit around the RV park, but it is constantly hot and dusty and windy…
We were feeling well enough to get out about 4:00 and join the club at a very good steak house nearby. After a few Old Fashioneds at the bar, and an appetizer of steak tartare, we joined the others for prime rib and cheesecake…
We returned to the Villa and turned in early…
Tuesday we felt a bit better (or at least Lynda did…) We headed out at 10:00 am to see the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center in Casper…
It is located on a bluff adjacent to the Overland Trails – the trails used by the emigrants to Oregon, the 49ers going to California, and the Mormons going to the Great Salt Lake valley…
Before we had left the campground this morning our leaders asked that the ladies wear their Oregon Trail bonnets and dresses… As you might guess, we are non-participants in activities such as this…
We walked toward the museum building…
The building itself reflects a lot of imagery…
The blue wall segments represent the continuous westward trek by the pioneers and the emigrants, always up hill. Missouri is at about 2,000′ elevation, and the continental Divide is at roughly 7,000′ where the trails crossed it…
The stone wall is all native sandstone, and the green wall represents the sagebrush that was the emigrants constant companion on the prairie.
The arch portal, of course, represents the hoops and canvas of the covered wagons…
Inside we watch a short film about the emigrants. The lifesize displays added to the realism of the film…
Some of the Mormon emigrants could not afford oxen or mules, so they carried their possessions for 1,500 miles using handcarts. Lynda gave it a try!
One of the more interesting tidbits of the radical changes the emigrants brought to this region is in addition to all the other self-inflicted damage that I have reported on – loss of food and habitat for Indians, Pony Express ended by the transcontinental telegraph, wagon trains ended by the railroad, small towns ended by the Interstate Highways…
As the 350,000 emigrants passed through here on the trails small settlements sprang up to service the needs of the emigrants. When the trains ended the wagon travel, the rails took a different route again, this time to be more convenient to the coal deposits of southern Wyoming. These settlements slowly vanished…
Outside the Museum is a reproduction of a typical Pony Express station. There is a small stable and a small office for the station master. The station master lived here alone; and he was alone – he was visited by only four Pony Express riders per week. Otherwise he was free to fend for himself. When the Pony Express ended, most of these stations were retrofitted to be relay stations for the telegraph… Adaptive Reuse!
We returned to the Villa. I took a nap… Then we had a modest Happy Hours. We walked around the RV park in the evening…
We are leaving Nebraska today, traveling to Casper, WY (actually Evansville…).
But before I talk about today, here is a picture of all of us at Scott’s Bluff yesterday…
We drove through the Robidoux Pass, between the major cliffs at Scott’s Bluff. We will be following the the Oregon Trail for much of our trip today…
Beyond we see Nebraska countryside once again…
As we move west, closer to Wyoming, the terrain changes…
We entered Wyoming and found the town of Fort Laramie. Surprise! There is a fort here! As we headed for the fort we crossed over the North Platte River (for about the 8th time today…). Adjacent to the modern bridge we crossed is the old iron bridge built by the Army in the mid-1800s…
As we approached the fort we encountered three of our friends as they were leaving…
The visitors center had several well developed displays telling the history of the fort. It was originally a trading post, until the US Army bought it in 1849. By 1849, as California-bound 49ers joined the Oregon Trail emigrants the trickle of wagons across the plains had become a flood. The fort provided protection in addition to becoming a major supply post, the first since Fort Kearney, 600 miles to the east…
As the emigrants passed through the area they brought destruction… Annually, 10,000 wagons, 50,000 people, and 75,000 head of animals passed through here. The people and cattle killed and/or chased away the game, depriving the Indians of their food supply. Livestock trampled the grass across a two mile wide swath of land. The wagon wheels scarred the land; these scars are still visible over 150 years later. (As we will see at our next stop…)
Peace with the Indians was spotty at best. Treaties were made, treaties were broken. The Platte River Ferry incident and the Grattan Fight brought peace to an end. For 25 years the Northern Plains Indian Wars raged. By 1860, as the emigrant traffic slowed (with the introduction of stagecoach travel, and then train travel) the fort transformed from a rest stop for emigrants into a base of military operations against the Northern Plains tribes…
Through the 1860s the fort stood as a vital link between the east and west. 500,000 people now lived west of the Rocky Mountains. In 1860 the Pony Express came through, followed by the transcontinental telegraph. When the Civil War began, troops were withdrawn from the fort. The small crews left behind had to scramble with maintaining the hundreds of miles of telegraph lines. As the Indian wars rages, Indians attacked the fort, telegraph lines, stagecoach travel, and the wagon trains. The Fort Laramie Treaties of 1868 held the promise of peace on the plains. It was short lived…
The beginning of the end was Col. Custer and his defeat by Sitting Bull at Little Bighorn in 1876. This so enraged the army (and the federal government) that they set out on a mission of retaliation. This culminated at Wounded Knee in 1890, with the slaughter of between 150-300 Lakota Indians by the US Army. It ended any organized resistance by the Indians to living on reservations.
Fort Laramie in the 1880s was a “golden era”, as a false sense of of permanence prevailed. New buildings were built, old buildings were improved, and an active scene prevailed among the officers and the local citizens. In the mid 1880 a railroad nearby brought all the amenities of Victorian life to the fort.
In 1886 a new, larger railhead was built at the adjacent Fort Robinson. It made Fort Laramie superfluous. In 1889, the fort was closed and abandoned. In 1890, the land and buildings were sold at a public auction. Also in 1890, Wyoming was declared a state and the Indians were all on reservations. In 1890, the Superintendent of the Census declared that the American frontier had ceased to exist.
In 1937 a group of local residents of the town of Fort Laramie finally prevailed on the state of Wyoming to purchase 214 acres of old fort property, and preservation and restoration of the fort was begun.
I’m not a fan of forts and old buildings like this. We saw the fort, we learned the history, and we traveled on… It was a god thing that we were leaving now… In a few minutes the parking lot looked like this:
So we hurried on… About ten miles down the road we came to the town of Guernsey, with its giant rail yard. All these train cars are filled with coal, heading into Nebraska to fuel the 15 giant power plants there…
We crossed the North Platte River, again…
We found the ruts we are looking for…
These runts, worn into the sandstone, are impressive…
As we returned from the ruts and trails we found the Villa in the distance…
We drove the short distance back to the town of Guernsey. We stopped at the Twisted Eatery for lunch…
Nothing fancy here. No avant garde food. Just well made, simple food. We enjoyed our sandwiches! And we traveled on…
We arrived at our campsite in Evansville, adjacent to Casper… Lots of gravel, and a small patch of plastic grass at each site…
Happy hours were enjoyed. It is hot and windy this afternoon and evening. We enjoyed our view of the North Platt River…
Another travel day. We went only about 150 miles, but there were many interesting stops along the way…
But first, we enjoyed the Nebraska scenery…
We were told by our caravan manual to stop off and see The Golden Spike. Well, the only golden spike that I knew of was at Promontory Point, Utah, where the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads completed the transcontinental railroad. So we had no idea what to expect here. Our GPS took us on a wild goose chase around and through several residential neighborhoods until we finally arrived near the railroad tracks. We figured we were getting close. Then we saw the tower:
We figured this was probably worth a stop. We had no idea!
This is The Bailey Classification Yard! We learned a little history:
During the construction of the transcontinental railroad, North Platte was platted as a railroad town by Union Pacific’s Chief Engineer Grenville Dodge. It was chosen because of its close proximity to good water and its distance from Grand Island, Nebraska. In 1866 the first train rolled through what was known at the time as “Hell on Wheels” town. General Dodge quickly moved to construct major shop facilities and winter quarters and by 1867, main line operations began. Just two years later on May 10th, East met West at Promontory Summit in Utah, 690 miles east Sacramento and 1,087 miles west of Omaha. The railroad crossed two-thirds of the continent over some of the most difficult terrain on earth. It was called, “The Work of Giants” and it was the end of the frontier, as we knew it.
Today Bailey Yard, named for former Union Pacific president Edd H. Bailey, is the world’s largest train classification yard in the world. Over 3,000 cars are classified (or sorted) to make sure the cargo reaches its final destination. The yard is eight miles long, 1 1/2 miles wide, and at its widest point contains 320 sets or railroad tracks. The yard is located in the midst of key east-west and north-south corridors, on the busiest freight rail line in America, making it a critical component of Union Pacific’s rail network.
Bailey Yard has 17 receiving and 16 departure tracks handling 14,000 rail cars every 24 hours. The railroad cars are sorted daily in the yard’s eastward and westward yards, nicknamed “hump” yards. Using a mound cresting 34 feet for eastbound trains and 20 feet for those heading west, the hump yards allow four cars a minute to roll gently into any of 114 “bowl” tracks. Here they become part of trains headed for destinations in the East, West and Gulf Coasts of America, as well as the Canadian and Mexican borders. An average of 139 trains per day are comprised of raw and finished goods, such as automobiles, coal, grain, corn, sugar, chemicals, and steel along with consumer goods, including electronics, apparel and other retail products.
To keep America moving forward, the train operations and repair shops at Bailey Yard are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The fueling and service center processes more than 8,500 locomotives each month, using technology like overhead cranes and elevated work bays to maintain fluid operations.
All train movement throughout Bailey Yard is handled through the on-site command center with the latest computerized control systems. The Bailey Yard command center is tied to the Harriman Dispatching Center in Omaha, which controls hundreds of intercity trains daily throughout the company’s 23-state rail system. The Bailey Yard has over 2,500 employees, working 24 hours per day…
So we stopped to take a look… More trains than you can keep track of!
At the observation deck atop the tower we could see the operations, including the hump yards, as the incoming trains are broken up and re-combined into the various outgoing trains.
It was a fascinating opportunity to see how trains really work! We loved it!
We could even see some of our friends parked next to us down below…
So after this exhilarating tour we headed off to the Lincoln County Historical Museum. It was similar to other small county museums…
This one had a rare two story log cabin…
This barbershop was built in 1900…
Typical mercantile building you would see on Main Street in the 1890s…
Then we walked the 1/2 mile to see Scout’s Rest Ranch…
Scout’s Rest Ranch was Buffalo Bill’s retreat and retirement home. He lived here when not traveling with his Wild West shows, and then again after the shows were over…
William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody (February 26, 1846 – January 10, 1917) was an American soldier, bison hunter, and showman. He was born in Le Claire, Iowa Territory (now the state of Iowa), but he lived for several years in his father’s hometown in modern-day Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, before the family returned to the Midwest and settled in the Kansas Territory (now the state of Nebraska).
Buffalo Bill started working at the age of eleven, after his father’s death, and became a rider for the Pony Express at age 15. During the American Civil War, he served the Union from 1863 to the end of the war in 1865. Later he served as a civilian scout for the US Army during the Indian Wars, receiving the Medal of Honor in 1872.
One of the most famous and well-known figures of the American Old West, Buffalo Bill’s legend began to spread when he was only 23. Shortly thereafter he started performing in shows that displayed cowboy themes and episodes from the frontier and Indian Wars. He founded Buffalo Bill’s Wild West in 1883, taking his large company on tours in the United States and, beginning in 1887, in Great Britain and continental Europe.
This is his house at the Scout’s Rest Ranch. It was built in the late 1880s. It is considered to be in the “Second Empire” style, with elements of Italianate and Eastlake detailing. In my opinion, it is a big mess… Look at the shutters. Why were shutters added to the windows? Either to keep the Indians out (not applicable here) or to keep the sun off and to insulate against the cold in winter. Look at these shutters: The cannot do either: they don’t even cover the entire window if they were to be closed… I hate phony stuff like this!
Inside the decoration is “authentic Victorian”… I hate Victorian interiors! It hurts my eyes! That wallpaper is abominable!
The outbuildings were interesting…
The Ice House:
The Spring House: (It would also make a good wine cellar…)
The Cob House: Corn cobs were stored here to burn in the stoves in the house…
Lakes are always nice:
So we set off again, heading west to Ogallala…
We arrived at the RV Park and we were soon set up…
We had our last GAM.
This afternoon as we crossed over to the western-most counties of Nebraska we moved from Central time to Mountain time. But our phones, watches, and the truck GPS have a hard time handling the change. So our clocks have been flipping back and forth between the two zones; we never know what time it is…
Today we visited a few attractions in St. Joseph. We began at Western Missouri State College, where they have the Walter Cronkite Memorial…
Walter Cronkite lived 1916 to 2009. He was a reporter during WW II and began leading the news on CBS TV in 1953 until his retirement in 1981. He was an eye witness to all major news stories in the second half of the 20th century.
The exhibit has photos, videos, and memorabilia. It was a very interesting place…
The have a reproduction of his TV news studio…
There was also an interesting but rather bizarre piece of art commemorating Apollo 11 and the space program in general…
The Kennedy assassination…
Famous news stories… Can you find Patty Hearst?
And that’s the way it was…
We then went to the well-visited Stetson Hat Outlet… No, I didn’t buy a cowboy hat. Never wore one, never will..
In downtown St. Joseph we visited the Patee House Hotel.
When John Patee opened his luxurious four-story brick hotel in 1858, he knew it was an innovation for its time, but little did he suspect that 134 years later it would still be attracting visitors from across the United States.
Patee built it as a hotel, a role that was not to be because of its location more than a mile from downtown St. Joseph. Yet it was a hotel three times, a girl’s college twice, and finally a shirt factory for more than 80 years.
I’m always fascinated by these old hotels, exactly because they so rarely last very long. The Patee House was built in 1858. It housed the headquarters of the Pony express in 1860. Then the Civil war came and the army moved in; we had the industrial evolution, and all the “modern” innovations rendered the building obsolete.
This was the grand ballroom, furnished as it was in 1860…
The Dining Room in one of the suites…
The Bridal Suite…
Another suite…
We saw typical bedrooms, bathrooms as renovated in the 1920s, and lots of other historic memorabilia. I would have loved to see more. But we had to gather for the obligatory group photo… Yes, the women are all wearing period-appropriate bonnets…
We toured the Pony Express Museum…
The Pony Express was a mail service delivering messages, newspapers, and mail using relays of horse-mounted riders that operated from April 3, 1860, to October 26, 1861, between Missouri and California.
The Pony Express was not a mail service of the USPS. It was owned and operated by the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company. It was of great financial importance to the U.S. During its 18 months of operation it reduced the time for messages to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to about 10 days. It became the West’s most direct means of east-west communication before the transcontinental telegraph was established in October, 1861. It was vital for tying the new U.S. state of California with the rest of the United States.
The Pony Express was not a financial success and went bankrupt in 18 months, when faster telegraph service was established. Nevertheless, it demonstrated that a unified transcontinental system of communications could be established and operated year-round. When replaced by the telegraph, the Pony Express quickly became romanticized and became part of the lore of the American West. All of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows featured information on the Pony Express. Its reliance on the ability and endurance of individual young, hardy riders and fast horses was seen as evidence of rugged American individualism of the frontier times. As we are finding out on this caravan, every small town along the route today has a Pony Express Museum…
Many people don’t know that the Pony Express only ran for 18 months, and, in fact, it was doomed from the start. The construction of the transcontinental telegraph also began in 1860, The founders of the Pony Express must have known this… Very odd…
So our caravan begins here, at the eastern terminus of the Pony Express. The Oregon Trail follows the west-bound path of the Pony Express for the first few hundred miles…
Adventures in the Villa 