Chimney Rock National Situs Poker Online Historic Site, Scott’s Bluff National Monument, Register Cliffs, Oregon Trail Ruts National Historic Landmark, Fort Laramie National Historic Site
This area in western Nebraska Situs Poker Online and eastern Wyoming was about a third of the way along the Oregon Trail. I think of those many people traveling with their small wagons (about 10’ x 4’), hauling what goods they could, and what food they could, driven by hope – that cruelest of motivations, the women and children without choice, the men wanting more – more opportunity, more wealth, more land, more, more, more – facing snow in the mountains if they didn’t hurry, seeing sights and climates they’d never imagined, maybe stopping to bury a person here and there, maybe walking past the bodies, many suffering from cholera, enduring the heat often without clean water – sometimes without any ; I think of them with awe. We don’t know how many of them took to the Trail. Estimates run as high as half a million traveling the 160 days at about 15 miles a day to cross the trail in the years between 1841 and 1866.
In my mind’s eye, I see them starting out from St Louis with all their goods. Over the first three or four days, they see their oxen won’t make it if they don’t lighten the load. They Situs Poker Online drop off on the side of the trail stoves, grandma’s treasured bureau, excess clothes and bedding, their marriage bed, whatever it takes; they whittle it down to the bone. Not so long after that as they cross today’s Missouri and Iowa heading for Nebraska, as they camp by rivers and streams where hundreds have camped before, where there is no sanitation, cholera strikes down many. At the time, if you got a disease like cholera, you lived or died based on your own body’s strength and ability to fight off the disease. Estimates are that, on the Trail, a third of those who contracted cholera died. Even if you lived, you would be badly weakened for a while. But you would have to walk on. Snow would be on the mountains before you got there if you did not.
Sometimes they shared Situs Poker Online the Trail with gold diggers hustling to California. Sometimes, particularly in later years, they shared the Trail with drovers taking any kind of livestock that could travel out to California where they could sell it for about ten times the buy price ( there’s more then one way to get that gold).
Some who travelled the Trail did not have the money for wagons which ran $300 – $500, so they carried Situs Poker Online their goods or, as was the case for around 3,000 Mormon families, they used a handcart. These cost $10 and could tote about 300 pounds. Usually some wagons to carry extra food went with the Mormons.
So they would cross Nebraska with its eye-deceiving landscapes where sometimes things could look ‘not that far’ only to seem unchanging for days at 15 miles per day. Although I think Chimney Rock must have looked like it wasn’t getting closer for days and days of travel, it stood out so as a destination after days and weeks of traveling the Nebraska prairie that it is the most mentioned landmark in the diaries Situs Poker Online and letters of those who traveled the Trail. It is very distinctive certainly
The next great goal along the way, Scotts Bluff, would actually Have been visible shortly after leaving Chimney Rock. Unfortunately, until 1950 when someone figured a way through them, Scotts Bluff was surrounded by ravines that were considered impassable. A long detour was necessary. When those on 5he Trail began using the way found through the ravines near the bluff, it cut 8 miles (half a day) off the distance Poker Online to travel the Trail.
The next big stop on the way was Fort Laramie. And it was a big one. The traveller could buy supplies, mail letters, see a doctor, trade away weary draft animals, get repairs done and see new faces all at the last fort on the Trail before Oregon. Fort Laramie, which started out as a trading post but was built up over time to be quite cosmopolitan with such things as porches on the officer houses and some of the barracks, and a couple streets lined with shade trees must have seemed a virtual city. The garrison could have 700 men in it plus there were civilian employees such as carpenters, farriers and wheelwrights as well as teamsters bringing in supplies.
The teamsters came in great wagon trains of wagons with wheels almost as tall as a man, each wagon carrying 8000 pounds of cargo and being pulled by five to six teams of oxen. To fulfill the Government’s contract for supplies in 1858, a firm required 3,500 wagons, 40,000 oxen, 1,000 miles and 4,000 drivers. Think of the logistics.
When the travelers left Fort Laramie, they realized the effect the rising elevation would have. They had to get through The Black Hills and then the Rockies. Another purge Of possessions littered the Trail. The next stop on their way was the campground at what is known today as Register Cliffs. Here, over 700 of those passing down the Trail inscribed their names, often with the date and where they were from. From here, a third of the way up the trail, with heat, thirst, biting cold, storms, often lethal river crossings and the grind of crawling up into higher elevations ahead, they walked on.
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