South Pass and the Continental Divide

Before we leave the Great Plains and the buffalo too far behind...

Uh, did you hear a discouraging word?

South Pass?  What is it south of?  Turns out it is south of whatever is north of it; the name was given by Indian tribes from the northern Rockies, a name that they shared, along with directions, with the first trappers who roamed the area in the 1820s.  What's in a name--that's where we're going...to the part of the country where you can see the bones of the earth exposed, as in this view over the road up to the pass, where you can look down and still see the tracks of the wagons etched in the terrain.



 The way the guide Broken Hand Fitzpatrick took the party of 1841, up the Platte, then the North Platte into Wyoming, up the Sweetwater and up to the Pass became the combined corridor for all the trails--California, Oregon, Mormon and Pony Express.  The Pass,  20 miles wide by 80 miles long looks much as it did when the wagons were pouring over it, with the emigrants nervous about its startling appearance, as a gray-green ocean of sage brush,  but heartened by the fact that the streams that they walked along were flowing west.
 

 The going was increasingly tough, bouncing over sage tufts and sandy soil, but they could still mostly hold to their 15-20 miles a day,  though the experience of being in a thunder storm 'caught between heaven and earth' was an experience never forgotten.  It was also near this point that the companies that came after 1841  were approaching a point of decision where they would have to choose this trail or that cutoff.  As more knowledge spread from emigrant parties that had gone before, more and more shortcuts or cutoffs began to be proposed, many of them more difficult than the main trail that they were trying to shorten.  But particularly in the Gold Rush, the emigrants were desperate for anything that would shave off a few miles and a few days, convinced that their fortune depended on it.

The early far West, where all the women were strong and all the men were good looking--weren't they?

Another pioneer out strolling the trail in the South Pass

Heading west out of South Pass and following the route taken by the Company of 1841, we dropped down near the Utah border before heading north toward southeastern Idaho, stopping in Soda Springs, where that same pesky old-timer turned up again at the naturally carbonated spring, one of the two for which the town is justly famous.  The pioneers learned to add flavorings to the water to make it even tastier--the Kool Aid of the California Trail.

It's him again

This happens every hour on the hour--you'd think they'd get it fixed

In 1841, they were approaching the point where the company was going to have to take leave of their guide, as he had contracted with the missionaries in the party to get them to the Oregon Territory, which made up the two modern states of Washington and Oregon.  The guide, Fitzpatrick, believed that they were foolish to tempt fate in the Great Basin deserts without any experience or maps.  He persuaded about half of them to give up their dreams of  California and follow the Snake and Columbia rivers to Oregon.  The others, including Joe B, were willing to disregard the advice and strike out on their own.  One of them later remembered, 'We were now thrown entirely upon our own resources.  All the country beyond was to us a veritable terra incognita, and we only knew that California lay to the west.'  They were going to pay a harsh price for their arrogance.

Approaching the Rockies

After about eight weeks on the trail, or three and a half days in our case, the emigrants were about to leave the easy bit behind.  They had sauntered by the Big Blue, the Little Blue, and the Platte.  There was abundant water and usually feed for the animals.  But this was about to end.  The country grew rougher and the scenery more spectacular as they rumbled past Chimney Rock and Scotts Bluff.  As they crossed into what would become Wyoming, the rubber was about to hit the road--although rubber hadn't yet been invented, but you get the idea.  One of the first of the milestones that would tell them that they were in a new phase of their journey was Fort Laramie, and that was our first stop too.

We didn't quite see it like this

Part of what we saw was this.  The old barracks have been re-built and the Indians are gone

When Joe B stopped by in 1841, the fort was a simpler privately run affair, more like the picture at the top.  By the time he made his last crossing 13 years later, buildings like the one below were beginning to be built by the new owners, the US government, though life was very colorful, as described by one visitor, 'We were visited by about two hundred Cheyennes and Sioux, who danced a little, stole a little, eat a great deal, and finally went their way rejoicing.' 



The next stop after Ft. Laramie was about 10 miles up the North Platte, where many of the emigrants stole away from their chores for a few minutes to carve their names in the soft stone face of Register Cliff, for posterity and for friends who might be following behind, letting them know they were still alive. 

Joe B, is that you?

 They were still in pleasant country, and some of the emigrants even took some time to visit another natural wonder, even though it was about a mile from the trail, the natural stone bridge spanning a nearby creek.

There were a number of hard miles to be crossed before the emigrants could tick off another marker.  It was Independence Rock, first named by trappers because they camped near it on July 4.  In the following years, if emigrants made it there by Independence Day they celebrated by carving their names in the rock, reading the Declaration of Independence and having a few drinks.  So many did this that they began running out of space.  One emigrant in 1852 complained, 'Came to independence rock about ten o'clock this morning I presume there are a million of names wrote on this rock'.  

The wagons are on the site of today's visitor center, waiting for it to open

The emigrants could enjoy the Sweetwater River for the next few days, but they were now venturing on the way to South Pass and the country was turning into something that was unlike anything they had seen before.

We enjoyed a walk around Independence Rock, until we got to the back side and a squall hit--then we got a little taste of pioneer 'suck it up' medicine--and some damp clothing in the bargain.

As we stopped for our umpteenth roadside information board, I was struck by the number of mentions received by the Pony Express--so here's a little rant:  About the Pony Express--they get a lot of attention, some might say an inordinate amount of attention, in this part of the world.  Their entrepreneurial effort to deliver express mail to California from St. Joseph Missouri in ten days by using young men riding in relays on good horses as fast as they could is the very stuff of cowboy adventure.  Very romantic and colorful, but it only lasted from  April 3, 1860 – October 24, 1861, before going out of business with the arrival of the transcontinental  telegraph in 1861.  Yet on a plenitude of wayside plaques its ephemeral existence is celebrated from St. Joseph to Sacramento.  Without wanting to be too curmudgeonly, let me put this into context.  'The Pony' lasted about 18 months on the trail between the Missouri River and Sacramento.  Joe B Chiles, in seven crossings of approximately four months each, spent 28 months on the trail betwen Independence Mo. and California.  So take that, Pony Express.  He wasn't as romantic, but Joe B knew how to walk and navigate and negotiate with the people he met on the trail.  And where are his wayside plaques?

Up the Platte Emigrant Highway

Today was all about the Platte River and finding a cup of coffee in something that wasn't a styrofoam cup. 
 
First, the Platte--a wide, shallow, east-west river, providing a corridor which drew Joe B and those who followed him westward.  Starting in the uplands of central Wyoming, it snakes eastward 800 rugged miles to the Missouri River.  Some of the Indians called it the Great Medicine Road as they roamed along it with the great herds of buffalo on which much of their culture was based.  Various emigrants called it the Oregon Trail, the Pony Express Route (about which more later), The Mormon Trail, or the California Road. 
This was a western river, 'Too thick to drink, to thin to plow, too pale to paint.'  'A mile wide and an inch deep.'  It was like no other that they had encountered east of the Missouri, but it provided a route into the continent, first for the trappers of the Hudson's Bay Company, then the first company of settlers bound for California, then for the flood of emigrants, adventurers and gold seekers who followed, turning the trace or faint track of the Indians and the trappers into a trail, 'nearly a quarter of a mile wide--that is, a row of wagons fifteen hundred feet across, and extending in  front and to the rear, as far as we could see...a vast sea of white flapping wagon covers, and a seething mass of plodding animals,' as described by an emigrant from 1852.

Now about that cup of coffee.  We had been on the road for over two days, and as lunchtime approached I realized that every cup of coffee that I had been served was presented in a styrofoam cup, which as anyone can tell you  is not a proper cup of coffee.  The economics of modern food service--at a certain price level--seems to point the way in America towards completely disposable plates, crockery and utensils--an ecological and gastronomic tragedy.  Fortunately, the ladies running the Julesburg Cafe in dusty little Julesburg Colorado, just over the state line from Nebraska, had not yet been copied on that memo and we were able to obtain lunch and a passable cuppa in a heavy china mug.  Out on the interstate, trucks and cars barreled along fueled by caffeine from styrofoam, unaware of their benighted status.

Wagon trace in the foreground, caffeine junkies in rear

Around the corner from the Cafe, a cathedral of the plains

The rest of our time was spent roaming on both sides of the river, following the National Park Service Auto Tour Guide, looking for emigrant wagon ruts and swales (whatever they might be--I don't travel with a dictionary) and they were there, where we were directed to look. 

Faint tracks, but still visible

 Some of the other roadside historical notices highlighted tracks of the emigrants.  Others indicated burial places of the unlucky who never made it further than the Platte Valley.  Yet other places commemorated wrongs done to the native inhabitants that would culminate in bloodshed in the 1860s.  As early as 1841 a Sioux chief was complaining to a trader, 'The white man takes our  property without paying for it!  He kills our game, he eats our meat, he drinks our water, and he travels our country, and what does he give the red man in exchange for all of this?'  This was not going to end well as more and more emigrants and settlers piled in to the plains.

But for our purposes, we reveled in the footsteps of Joe B who had followed this route in both directions, seven times.  Especially striking were the landmarks of Chimney Rock, and Courthouse Rock with its accompanying Jail Rock.  Perhaps the emigrants might have been anticipating Elvis in calling it Jailhouse Rock.  At any rate, from the time of the very first travelers through this land, these striking rock formations were indications of progress they were making on their way west at the rate of fifteen to twenty miles a day.
And the romance of the landscape is still readily available today, even without a covered wagon.

Chimney Rock was another mark of progress along the trail

Hello Elvis, here's your Jailhouse Rock

From Topeka Kansas to Kearny Nebraska

 

 Greater Topeka--About last night—the outlook on arrival wasn't propitious—we found the hotel off the strip mall, behind Hooters, within earshot of the Interstate, but on closer inspection, it was clean, friendly and quiet. Though quiet refers to man made noise only, for as we sat by the pool [waterhole?] drinking a complimentary beer [who says this isn't a great country?] the noise of the cicadas in the surrrounding trees was deafening—like an orchestra of hair dryers tuning up. Their noisy efforts to deter predators forced our conversation to the level of a low shout  In noticing their noise we were in company.  They have been featured in literatrue since Homer's Iliad.  The local dining offerings did not include deep fried cicadas as they do in  other parts of the world, but the franchised fare of the strip mall included, Jack-in-the-box, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, and the rest, supplemented by some locals – a Mexican, a Freddies steakburger, and another place offering a deep fried Oreo cookie based churro-like object, capable of clogging all your arteries at a distance of 10 yards.

 

 The next morning we were wiggling our way up through Kansas to Nebraska then up and across Nebraska toward the great Platte River.  Here is where the plains really come into their own.  The rolling, semi-wooded nature of western Missouri now becomes the big-sky-far-horizon, with corn, sorghum and soybeans as far as the eye can see.  In the far distance, the grain elevators stand out on the horizon like ocean liners at sea.

The road passes plaque after plaque, commemorating watering holes, meadows, fords, and springs used by the emigrants.  Scattered along the road are also isolated graves left of the emigrants whose adventure to California ended not with the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but with the rapid onset of cholera, the biggest killer on the trail.  There were others besides.  In Joe B's company was the unfortunately well named Mr. Shotwell, who carelessly pulled his rifle, barrel first, out of his wagon.  The trigger snagged on something and Shotwell was well shot in the chest and died within the hour.  He was buried with as much ceremony as they could muster and the wagon train moved on.

Today, at the likes of Alcove Springs, there is a boarded nature walk down to the creek, and a plaque with a flagpole commemorating this welcome and popular spot on the trail.  We walked to a roughly carved obelisk standing in the middle of a field to see the tombstone of a cholera victim and on the hill opposite we could see the faint trace of wagon ruts--an infrequent moment of connection between the present and the past.

 

After the Rendezvous

First touchdown on the great plains -- Chicago.  Not much of the old west here, at old O'Hare, though I was treated to a good view of a plane from Frontier Airlines, so that was an auspicious start.  Not only that, there were two Indians in the departure lounge for the next flight, to Kansas City, only one of them was wearing a sari, so that didn't count.  On the other hand there was someone else in a big black cross between a cowboy hat and a sombrero, with a moustache to match, so I knew we were headed in the right direction. 

Then on to another plane for the hour flight to Kansas City, an uneventful if bumpy ride through tall thunderheads building up in the sultry sky with many miles of Missouri and Kansas spread out below us, a largely tamed landscape, with only the old watercourses of the Missouri River, the Kansas River and the Little Blue giving us a hint of the landscape crossed by the early pioneers. 

And there in the arrivals hall, awaiting my appearance as he had been for several hours, was brother James, looking distinguished in his straw pork pie hat.  He was ready to hit the trail, having walked the length of the airport concourse more times than he could count and sampled something from all the food vendors he could stomach.  We grabbed my bag and got over to the Hertz desk to see what they had in the way of wagons, and found not a station wagon with wood on the sides, but a respectable Toyota Carolla, built for service if not for speed and style.  We shunned the Satnav--how could we follow in those footsteps with that bumptious lady telling us every twist and turn?  It was unthinkable.

From the rolling wooded hills on the east side of the Missouri, we followed the major roads west to our first stop, Topeka Kansas, where we began to see hints of the great plains which so impressed the pioneers, where they would be trespassers on Indian lands, beyond the protection of the government--no shops, hospitals, or laws.  They were in a land with no second chances.
 

 As one of them put it in 'The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California,
'Here we were, without law, without order, and without restraint, in a state of nature...Some were sad, while others were merry; and while the brave doubted, the timid trembled'
But they had been told by newspaper editor, John L. O'Sullivan, 'We are the nation of human progress and who will, what can, set limits to our onward march?  Providence is with us and no earthly power can'.  He later shortened this to proclaim that it was 'Our Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent alloted by providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.'  That's been the line around here ever since.

'Setting up camp' in the dusk, surrounded by the screeching of the cicadas, we'll head down to the chuck wagon to recruit ourselves with a local beverage or two... while the big Muddy Missouri and the Kansas River are still rolling along, with the traffic roaring over them in a way that would have baffled our pioneers.

The Rendezvous August 27

It's all set for the afternoon of 27 August.  Brother Jim flies in from Connecticut and I fly in from London via Chicago.  Time to fold up all those maps that cover the floor in the spare bedroom.  It's an early flight from Heathrow, so I'm hitting the road at 4.30 in the morning.  Yikes.  This is going to be an exploration on more than a few levels.  Doing a road trip together as brothers for the first time in about 40 years--are our nerves going to be able to stand it?  Then there is the physical exploration of a part of the country about which we

know nothing.  Bidwell says that their company's ignorance was almost total about the land that they had to cross--so no change there.  My ignorance is virtually as pristine, though I have the advantage of having seen lots of movies featuring horses, cows, corn and gunslingers, which is not reassuring.  There is also the discovery of the route as we follow in Joe B's footsteps.  The early pioneers like him were embarking on a landscape which was nothing like what they had experienced before.  Searing deserts, soaring mountains, narrow defiles for which they had no descriptive word, and had to borrow the word 'canyon' from the Spanish.  But that was to come--this part of the trip for the pioneers was all about pushing out on to the rolling prairies and crossing streams, creeks and rivers--some by pulling, some by pushing, some by floating.  We'll be saddling up our mid-size rental car at Kansas City airport and heading out on to the wide open spaces of Interstate 435, a prospect that Joe B would surely have found more daunting than meeting up at the big oak tree outside of Independence.  But never mind.  We're commited to head on out...

                                         It ain't the International House of Pancakes, but it looks kinda fun...

And if I can quote Fats Domino, who could claim to know Kansas City a bit more than a century later, with the 1952 lyrics by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller

I'm going to Kansas City

Kansas City, here I come
I'm going to Kansas City
Kansas City, here I come
They got a crazy way of loving there
And I'm gonna get me one

I'm gonna be standing on the corner
12th Street and Vine
I'm gonna be standing on the corner
12th Street and Vine
With my Kansas City baby
And a bottle of Kansas City wine

Well, I might take a plane I might take a train
But if I have to walk I'm going just the same
I'm going to Kansas City
Kansas City, here I come
They got some crazy little women there
And I'm gonna get me one

But I don't think we will tarry long anywhere near the corner of 12th St. and Vine.  The plan is to rest in Topeka tonight, so we're heading west...

A story of visionaries, fools and rental cars...

Joe B in his younger days [that's his second wife's hand by the way]

This is a story of visionaries, fools and  mid-size rental cars.

"We knew that California lay west, and that was the extent of our knowledge". --John Bidwell

Joseph Ballinger Chiles (Joe B) was a pioneer who crossed the country with John Bidwell and the first wagon train to California on a journey without maps.  Then he crossed it six more times, knowing a bit more about where he was going.  He was a friend of Kit Carson, Broken Hand Fitzpatrick, John Bidwell, and most of the early arrivals who made California into part of the United States.

Joe became a Mexican citizen, and built a ranch in the Chiles Valley, next to the Napa Valley.  He invested in property in Napa County, Lake County, Yolo County--and lost or gave much of it away.  He was my great-grand uncle and he is virtually unknown today in California because he refused to write anything down.  He is reported to have said that he never wrote a diary or memoirs because he didn't do anything that anyone else hadn't done.  So now I am going to do the writing.  Was he crazy? Was he a visionary? My brothers, Jim and John and I are going down the trail from Independence Missouri, through Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Nevada and California, starting on August 27 and we are going to try and find his trail, to know a little of what he knew when he headed west in May 1841. And to know him a little better so that we can pass on what we find out to future generations of the family and others

The air ticket is booked. The rental car is booked. The maps are spread out on the floor, along with background reading, interpretive guides, illustrations.  You name it, I've got it.  We just have to get there and do it.  Has it been done before?  You bet.  Has it been done by Joe B's California descendants?  I doubt it--and it's about time somebody did.  Next year is the 175th anniversary of that first company of wagons across the plains.  Let's shine a new light on that memory and see what it can teach us.

Lots to learn, particularly about the lay of the land.  For left coasters, this is the bit that we fly over.  The supposedly flat, uninteresting bit which is nothing but corn and cowboys.  It might be that this view changes over the next weeks...