The End of the Road…
Our travels continue as we head 13 miles up Highway 26 from Fort Laramie to the little town of Guernsey, Wyoming. With each mile the land becomes more rugged, with sandstone bluffs encroaching closer to the river on the south and rolling hills getting nearer on the north. Guernsey was about one day’s travel for the pioneers from Fort Laramie and it presented one of the first climbing challenges on the trail. Before tackling the climb out of the river bottom many travelers paused at a site known as Register Cliff to carve their names into posterity on the sandstone cliff to the south. Today the most historic part is behind a tall fence, but people over the years have continued to inscribe their names in the sandstone in a band roughly twelve feet high along the bottom of the cliff. Due to weathering and vandalism it is very hard to see the oldest signatures but here and there under an outcropping of rock that provides a small bit of protection from the elements you can still clearly see names from the 1800’s.
After carving their names into the cliff pioneers turned their attention west and about one mile later had to struggle up a draw to the top of the cliffs. I am standing on top of the cliffs looking down towards the parking lot so you can see that the bluffs at this point are not particularly high but because of the sheer face of the bluffs and the sandstone outcroppings that had to be crossed, passage was a challenging task. Just beyond the motorhome is the North Platte and in the distance is the present town of Guernsey.
I was the only person at the park on this cold and windy day when the air was rife with the sounds of history. For whatever reason, I have to tell you that this was one of the most impactful moments of the trip. Previously the trail had been a braid of tracks but at this point they all converged into one trail, about six feet wide, as the wagon caravans toiled up the cliff to the plateau above. At the top a small sandstone ridge barred their way and there was no other choice but to go over it. During the life of the Oregon Trail nearly 500,000 people crossed this rock, over 70,000 in 1852 alone. As they pushed and pulled their wagons across the rocky terrain, the wagon wheels slowly ground down the sandstone to leave evidence of their passing for future generations. I was actually standing in the middle of the Oregon Trail feeling the moans of the oxen, hearing the creaking of the wheels, and sensing the sighs of exhaustion still wafting in the breeze as I looked east down the trail.
The rock in the picture above has been ground down until it is about 6 feet deep and about 6 feet wide. I could nearly touch both sides as I walked through. Turning around and looking west from the same spot, the trail fades into the distances of time.
All I can say is that it was a moment…
I returned back to Highway 26 and continue west to Casper, Wyoming, where I leave the Oregon Trail and turn north to Billings. The 100 miles between Guernsey and Casper crosses over rugged land, not mountainous but a weathered plateau cut deep by numerous ravines and small creek beds. The North Platte is out of sight most of the time but looming over all are the Rocky Mountains on the horizon. The river continues to flow from the northwest and provides a natural path before the valley takes a sharp turn to the south as the river drains from northern Colorado (readers might remember that in the beginning of this trip I attended the tractor pull in Encampment, Wyoming, which is near the headwaters of the North Platte.) Near where the North Platte emerges from central Wyoming and turns sharply southeast to flow to the Missouri the Oregon Trail crosses the North Platte from the south side to the north. Though the river looks tame enough today, during the spring it was a treacherous ford.
Brigham Young was leading the Mormons to the Salt Lake area in 1847 when he established a ferry service here over the North Platte (passage was free for Mormons, all others paid a toll.) In 1859 Louis Guinard built a bridge and trading post at the site which then became a stage coach stop, Pony Express station and telegraph office over the next couple of years. In 1862 the US Army established a small military post named Platte Bridge Station on the site. A Lt. Caspar Collins led a small detachment that was to escort a supply train but it was ambushed after crossing the bridge. Lt. Collins was killed and the name of the post was changed to Fort Caspar. The fort was closed in 1867 but a small town grew on the north bank of the river. Fort Caspar was reconstructed in 1936 to resemble how it would have looked in the 1860’s. Even though built to provide protection, there was not a stockade around the small complex of buildings laid out in an “L” shape, just the southeast corner. The first picture is looking at the “L” from the “outside”; the second picture looks at the complex from “inside”.
Since the tourist season is over in Caspar (it was 19 degrees the night before my visit) the buildings were locked for the winter. I left the Fort and crossed the river to cruise modern Caspar for a bit. I have been to Caspar a number of times before and have to say I wasn’t too impressed then; nothing that I saw on this visit changed that impression! Caspar is the second largest city in Wyoming with around 55,000 people (Cheyenne is the largest with about 59,000) and the economy is based on energy. The oil industry started back in the 1920’s and has experienced resurgence lately while the immense coal reserves in Wyoming stretch to the northeast. The downtown area is small and not particularly notable, except that the national banks seem to be in a bit of a competition for the title of tallest “logo” in town. First Interstate has the tallest building, but Wells Fargo far and away has the strangest building and tallest logo.
The other fact that I know will interest readers (for a variety of reasons, I’m sure!) is that the most revered citizen in Caspar is Dick Cheney and the local federal building is named after him, make of that what you will…
And with that, I turn north on I-25 and dash to Billings, just days ahead of the first winter storm of the season. From the tractor pull in Encampment to the white sands of Alamogordo; the depths of Carlsbad Caverns and the salt tunnels of Strataca; and finally the epic Oregon Trail, it has been a quite the adventure. I thank those of you who came along for a trip that spanned 5,371 miles spread out over 62 days. The Lunch Box and I are tucked in for the winter in Billings but hope that Volume 5 will be forthcoming starting sometime in February 2015 as the next adventure begins.
Next up: Don’t know, just hopefully somewhere warm because the high today (November 12) here in Billings is supposed to be 4 degrees and it’s really not even winter yet!
THANKS!
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