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OLD AGE IS NOT FOR SISSIES

BECAUSE NOTHING IN LIFE IS TO BE FEARED, IT IS ONLY TO BE UNDERSTOOD

Great Florida Cattle Drive Redux

by Filed Under: Following Old Trails, Great Florida Cattle Drive 2016 Leave a Comment

Beginning tomorrow I will repost each day’s journey on the 2016 Great Florida Cattle Drive. Chuck and I participated in it one year ago, and now they made a documentary film about the event. 

On Thursday evening February 23rd, WFSU in Tallahassee along with other public television stations will air this one-hour documentary entitled “The Great Florida Cattle Drive 2016”, a film by Elam and Nic Stoltzfus and their production company Live Oak Production Group.
The film is about the reenactment of an 1850 Florida Cattle Drive, which was held last year in central Florida. Five hundred men and women spent a week-long journey herding cattle across central Florida, a 50-mile drive. Many were in period costumes, including myself.  


Chuck and I were part of that group, and I blogged daily about our experiences–the good, the bad, and the down right ugly. It was the trip of a lifetime.  
The blog posts begin tomorrow with the first post about training for the drive, when Chuck and I initially decided to participate. The entire series runs daily leading up to the film on February 23rd. Each post appears daily on my Facebook page.
If you have not signed up to receive notices from my Facebook page, entitled Old Age Is Not For Sissies Blog, please make sure you do so today. I cannot rerun the series directly from the blog, so there will be no emailed notices. So please “Like” my Facebook page. You can use this link to go directly to my Facebook page.  
Come join me daily and enjoy the ride. It was a wild one to say the least, and I enjoyed sharing it.

Following Old Trails: The Trail to Tallahassee

by Filed Under: Following Old Trails, Genealogy, Palmetto Pioneers, Travel Leave a Comment

In an earlier post Chuck and I followed some old trails and roads which we felt the Walker families may have used when they migrated to Florida from South Carolina in the late 1820s. If you remember, our daylight ran out around Milledgeville, Georgia; and I said that I would continue the trip in a later post.  

Well, this is it–a later post and a continuation of their and our journeys from Milledgeville on down into Florida.  We recently made this trip; but they traveled it about 1828, almost 200 years ago.  I need to stress, though, that I’m less certain of the route they took, as you’ll see later.

After the family left Fort Hawkins, which was the old fort south of Milledgeville that set on the eastern edge of the wilderness, they followed the Lower Creek Trading Path.  

As mentioned earlier Milledgeville was the Capitol of Georgia in the 1820s and it also set on the Fall Line Rd. Well, the Lower Creek Trading Path was essentially an extension of the fall line road that led on through Georgia to Alabama and Mississippi. The Path was also known as the Old Horse Path and was used by the Carolina traders before the foundation of Georgia. 

The wilderness west of Fort Wilkinson belonged to the Creek Nation until the Fort Wilkinson Treaty of 1826. This treaty opened the wilderness to migrating settlers; and by the time the Walkers traveled this route in 1828, it had only been opened two years. Most of the roads in the wilderness were widened Indian paths, except for the Lower Creek Trading Path. 

This route was not as primitive as one might imagine, because it had been opened earlier as a postal route leading to New Orleans. The Creek Nation allowed our postal carriers to use this path, and our government widened it and made it easier for travel.   

This road on its way to New Orleans crossed the Chattahoochee River nine miles south of Columbus, Georgia. State historical markers in Chattahoochee, Marion, and Taylor Counties today show the route through those counties. 
 
The road was previously very well traveled by the Indians of that area, who initially used it as a trading path. As mentioned earlier our government negotiated for our postal service to use the path; and years later during the War of 1812, it became, under another treaty, a military road. General Andrew Jackson and his army needed a faster route to get to New Orleans so they could ‘fire their guns cause the British kept a comin’. 

This Lower Creek Indian Path is also called the Federal Road and follows SR 112 south out of Milledgeville, and we can safely say it follows this path to Ft. Wilkinson. While I’m fairly certain how to follow the lower path of the Lower Indian Path/Old Federal Road out of Milledgeville as far as Ft. Wilkinson, I’m a little uncertain about where the Old Federal Road went from there. But I believe it followed the fall line.

There are different theories though as to where the road went from this fort. One theory is that it wandered south and west through Toomsboro towards Hawkinsville. This is also called the Vinson Highway, but Hawkinsville seems too far south of the Chattahoochee crossing mentioned earlier. Also, this road does not followed the fall line.

The other theory is that it followed the fall line on into Alabama and Mississippi. This one seems more correct. The next rivers over are the Ocmulgee in Macon and the Flint River on the western side of Crawford County. If you draw a line between these points and the fall line on the Chattahoochee below Columbus, the Old Federal Highway mostly follows US 80. I feel more certain that this is the Old Federal Road/Postal Horse Path.

More About Ft. Wilkinson 

South of Milledgeville on SR 112 is a marker that says that 300 yards east of the here is where Ft, Wilkinson stood. This fort, built in 1797 on Georgia’s Indian boundary, was an early trading house, where the Creek’s were supplied under the Treaty of New York of 1790. It is also where the 1802 treaty was signed when the Creek’s ceded the land westward to Commissioner’s Creek.  

There are also documents showing that this is the fort where the soldiers stayed when they widened and built the Lower Indian Path into the Federal Road.

In 1897 the Ft. Wilkinson garrison moved to Ft. Hawkins near the Ocmulgee River fall line, near present day Macon. Macon grew up around this fort. I believe this move is why it is so hard to follow the Federal Road, as the beginning of the Federal Road comes from two locations–the earlier one was Ft. Wilkinson south of Milledgeville and the later one was Ft. Hawkins near Macon.

So we first followed SR 112 past the site of Ft. Wilkinson until we came to a problem. We found that there is one section of the road where it does not follow SR 112. When SR 112 gets to US 23 northeast of Hawkinsville, the road here follows Coley Station Rd, which later becomes the Old Milledgeville Rd. After which it intersects with Alternate US 129 which goes southwest into Hawkinsville. This is a pretty drive, not as developed as the SR 112 route which bypasses this.

Another reason I believe SR 112 may have been built on an old road, not necessarily the Old Federal Rd., is because of a document that named several cities that were built on on it. This document actually calls this road the Old Federal Road, too. Actually, there are at least three Old Federal Roads in Georgia, one north of Atlanta, also, which was once an old Cherokee trading Path.

But documents said that this Federal Road went through cities such as Ashburne, Rochelle and Toombsboro, etc. If you look at the road that runs directly between these cities, it is State Road 112. But my question is where did this Federal Road stop and a possible new route opened for the new settlers moving into this area immediately after the 1826 treaty. If it was SR 112, when did this road open. I have no idea.

My problem now is how far did this old road follow SR 112. SR 112 pretty much will take you all the way to Cairo, GA which is where I can definitively say one can follow the Lower Hawthorne Trail, which will be explained later. Since I have no idea when this road opened, I decide that the other theory has more believability.

The Second Theory

It is said in several documents that the Lower Indian Path/Old Federal Road crossed the Flint River near the Old Indian Agency Headquarters in Crawford County. The Indian Agent Benjamin Hawkins lived here, and his burial site is by the river on the west side of Crawford County. His home and the community that grew up around it was called Traveler’s Rest. So we have a good idea where this was.  

If you look at a map, SR 112 goes in the wrong direction to intersect with this point. On face value SR 112 is not the path I’m looking for, unless it was blazed directly down from the old path south of Ft. Wilkinson. It does look like a good option, but again I believe it is wrong.

A better road was probably the one that came directly down from Traveler’s Rest and which Old US 19 was built upon. Old US 19 was changed over the years, and you can find its roadbed as SR 3 in most places now. I believe SR 3 beginning in Baconton, GA was where Hawthorne blazed his new trail.

What was the Old Federal Road Like?

By the time the Walker families traveled the Old Federal Road in 1828, the road was no more than 16 feet wide. It was widened in 1811 by the military to make it sufficient for moving supply wagons, cannons, and men on horse and foot. in other words it was a military road.  The Walkers spent weeks traveling this road and they camped on land beside it. 

 Its swamps and streams were causewayed and bridged. Stumps were ordered not to exceed 6 inches above the ground and to be pared around the edges. The settlers through their journals and diaries said that often the road climbed sandy ridges and rambled.

 The vegetation removed from the surface of the sandy loam soils caused the road to erode rapidly, especially on the sloped up and down grades. The pressure of the horses’ hooves and the iron bands of the wagons wheels disturbed the soil even more. They said that gullies formed everywhere. It was rough going.

The Old Hawthorne Trail

Some documents say that the Old Hawthorne Trail ran from Columbus all the way down to St. Marks, Florida, which is a riverport near the Gulf below Tallahassee. Some say that the road crossed the Flint River at Traveler’s Rest in Crawford County, Georgia. Almost all agree that it had been a Stagecoach Road. 

And I found where a Stagecoach road existed that ran south down from Albany. I began thinking this was the road that may have been a part of the Hawthorne Trail since this is the location where I lost the trail when traveling north on the lower part of the Hawthorn Trail. 

It is said that William Hawthorne blazed the road in 1818. The Walkers didn’t use it until 1828, a decade later. Many great and distinguished men traveled this old road, and it probably was used by Gen. Jackson while he was governor of Territorial Florida when going to and from The Hermitage, his home near Nashville, Tennessee. And this may be why they thought it went all the way to Columbus. He came down from Nashville which was north and west and then turned east using the Old Federal Road until he got to Traveler’s Rest.

My problem finding the Old Hawthorne Trail begins with a document that says that the old trail went south from Baconton. For a while I thought this was old US 19 which is now SR 3. 

There is a problem here in Baconton, Georgia, though, because Baconton did not exist when the Walkers came through in 1827-28. It wasn’t established until 1866.  

Instead, there was a little community east of Baconton on SR 93 which was called Gum Pond. It was a town then, and it sits on the Florida Stagecoach Road that ran from Albany to Thomasville through Camilla. I wonder if this is where the Hawthorne Trail runs south, not in the current downtown of Baconton. This area has the address of Baconton today, and this may be why folks thought that it pulled off from Baconton. This old Stagecoach Road runs parallel to SR 3 about three miles to the east. 

 

Also, State Road 112 coming down from Milledgeville through Sylvester intersects with The Old Stage Coach Rd. at Greenough just a little south of where Gum Pond was located. One can then take SR 112 all the way down to Cairo from here.

In Cairo is where there are signs that mark the Old Hawthorne Trail. These Hawthorne Trail signs run west of the city. These street signs call it the Upper Hawthorne Trail which run southeast into Cairo.  

Here the Upper Hawthorne roadbed is clay, reminiscent of the country music which romanticize red clay roads.  

This road runs through pine forests and cornfields before crossing US 84 which runs from Bainbridge to Thomasville through Cairo.  

On the north side of US 84, though, we spotted an old cemetery, the oldest one we’ve seen here. We walked through it, and I found a grave with a date of death of 1841. In graveyards this old, there are always unmarked earlier graves. Many graves in this area are unmarked because the Indians would dig bodies up. It was part of warfare to give one’s enemy a bad death.  

This cemetery could be old enough to have been here in 1828, when the Walkers came to Florida. This road forks left off of SR 112 which runs up through Camilla and intersects the Old Stage Coach Rd. just a few miles south of Gum Pond. So this is where we know the Old Hawthorne Trail existed.

For the first time today while on this old clay road I can really imagine what it might of been like as the family moved along through this area. Mostly these are just farms and forests through here now. It’s a good road but I wouldn’t want to be here when it rains. 

But north of this point between SR 112 in Greenough and here, I really have no idea if this is the trail. Poor Chuck. He’s driving and I’m directing first up this road and then down that road. He finally points out that he’s beginning to feel like Hoke in ” Driving Miss Daisy.”

As you get farther south, though, toward the Florida line, the Old Hawthorne Trail is marked both on maps and by signage on the highways. We followed it through Lower South Georgia south of Cairo. It is a pretty little two-laned grey asphalt road, canopied by trees in some areas. 

You can find it on the maps south out of Cairo on State Road 111, which is also marked as the Lower Hawthorne Trail.  
You’ll find where the Lower Hawthorne Trail pulls off of SR 111 way south of Cairo on your left. It becomes County Road 157A here.

This road is surrounded by farmland and is wooded in the lower areas. When you get to the end of 157A there is a street sign that says Concord Rd. If you follow this road, it dead ends in Florida. 

We turned right on Concord Rd. and over our shoulder noticed a sign that said Lower Hawthorne Trail with an arrow pointing back down towards the Concord Road. This is very helpful as it tells us that the historians believe that 157A or the Concord Road is also a part of the Old Lower Hawthorne Trail. Georgia has marked it side of the trail, but not Florida.

The Concord Rd. (Old Lower Hawthorne Trail) came down to about a mile east of Concord, Florida on State Road 12. To find current day Concord, we turned west on SR 12 and drove to the little intersection with its little service station. This is modern day Concord, and I believe the Old Bainbridge Road leading down to Tallahassee may also be part of the Old Lower Hawthorne Trail, but again I’m not sure, though some documents say it went all the way to St. Marks, Florida on the Gulf coast.

So it is my best guess that the family followed the Old Federal Road, which follows the fall line, out of Milledgeville. At Traveler’s Rest they turned south on a trail that later became Old US 19 until they traveled through Gum Pond and met up with the Hawthorne Trail which I believe began in or around Greenough, Georgia.  At least that is how I plan to write it in my book, adding all the research used to come to this conclusion.

But I’m not quite ready to begin writing.  I think I want to make one more road trip on this route to stop in at some key libraries just to test my theory one last time.  Besides I get the chance to follow this old trail again. And I love that as much as I love a good road trip.  

  

Day 7 on the California Trail:  Arriving at Sutter’s Fort

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Sutter’s Fort where Sacrememto now sits was the destination that all of the earlier California Trail settlers sought until about 1849. Notice the significance of that date? 1849 in California meant only one thing–GOLD! Besides. What else would they have named their football team?

Sutter’s Fort today sits in the heart of midtown Sacramento. You can see a full scale replica of it which takes up an entire city block. The replica is built around Sutter’s main building which still stands. This main building was his office and living quarters. It was two stories. Outside the fort were corrals, other outbuildings, and dwellings.

Back in the 1840s this was all in the wilderness, and the fort became a place of respite for the journeying settlers who had just crossed the mountains. Mr. Sutter had quite an operation here.
The fort was built before the US purchased California. He employed both the area’s Indians and Hawaiians to build it. He had traveled extensively before coming here and brought the Hawaiians with him. The fort set very near the American River.
There were several rooms where the settlers’ and their families were allowed to stay until they were able to get their own properties settled. There was a blacksmith shop, a trading store, a gunsmith shop, a blanket factory, a jail, a carpenter’s shop, a cooperage (where barrels were made), a weavers’ room, and a grist mill. It was a very self-sufficient fort.

Sutter was a generous man. He sent out one of the rescue parties along with supplies to find and help the Donner party, who had been snowed in in the mountains by one of the worst snow falls on record. A doll that belonged to one of the surviving Donner children is on display at the fort.
Sutter grew beans, wheat, barley, and peas. He fur traded, and he had a distillery too. He also raised livestock, and later he partnered with a man by the name of Marshall to build a sawmill about 40 miles up the American River.

Sutter's Mill

Sutter’s Mill

The sawmill, though, changed Sutter’s life forever; because while Marshall was having the tail race for the sawmill dug, he noticed something flashing in the sun. It was gold, and Mr. Sutter’s operation at the fort came to a screeching halt. Overnight, all his employees quit and became gold seekers.

Sawmll

Sutter & Marshall’s Sawmill (Replica)

And they all lived and worked in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, miles away from the fort. Too far away. His businesses ceased to exist.
We drove east out to the site where his sawmill was located at the edge of the Sierra Nevadas. It is a state park now. We enjoyed seeing where all of this took place.

There’s Gold in Them hills!
When Sutter’s partner James Marshall found the gold, he brought it back to Sutter’s Fort. They did a simple test and found it was indeed gold. They tried to keep it a secret, but one of the sawmill employees tried to sell a piece of it, and the word spread like wildfire. This caused the 1849 Gold Rush.
But there is an inside story to this that I read in a book called “Green Russell and Gold” by E. Spencer and B. Mead. It said, “It was a former Georgia woman, Mrs. Peter Wimmer, who in the year 1848 spread reports back home (to Georgia) of gold in California. Her husband was working for Captain Sutter and she was cooking for his crew at the time James Marshall turned up the first particles of gold in Sutter’s mill race. Marshall and Captain Sutter tried to keep the find a secret, but news of that sort soon leaks out. Nor was Mrs. Wimmer one to withhold such information, especially when she saw the men pour vinegar on a shining substance, and test it by boiling in her soap kettle….”
She sent word back to north Georgia, where the Russell Brothers and Solomon Roe lived. Solomon Roe is my 4th great grandfather, and one of the Russell brothers was his brother in law.
So we drove out from Sacremento about forty miles to the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park. This is where Sutter’s partner James W. Marshall saw something glittering in the water.

Gold Discovery Site

The Site of the Gold Discovery

Here in 1848 he found gold in the stream bed, and it set off one of history’s largest human migrations. You cannot talk about the California Trail without talking about the California Gold Rush, which started right here.
I believe that my GGGG Grandfather Solomon Roe traveled here for this gold rush. I’ve written about him before. The Roe family is entwined with the Russell family. Solomon Roe’s sister Mary was married to Levi Russell, one of three Russell brothers who would become famous during the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush later.
The Russell family was involved in the North Carolina Gold Rush in the early 1800s. I have not researched whether the Roe’s were too. Both the Russell and Roe families moved to the Georgia Gold Rush by 1832 and were involved in the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush in the late 1850s. I have direct evidence that Solomon Roe was a part of both the Georgia and Pike’s Peak gold rushes.
I know the Russell brothers went to the California Gold Rush, too. There is evidence that the Russell brothers took a party of men from Georgia to these gold fields. I believe Solomon was one of them, as his sister was already married to Levi Russell by that time. So I have a reason why I’m so interested in the California Trail and in this site.
Since the Russell party did not get here until at least August of 1849 or later, I believe this is where they came first–to where the first gold was discovered. I don’t believe they went to the fort first, but they may have gone there later.
They did well in the gold rush, and I know that Green Russell went back to Georgia via the American River, San Francisco, Panama, and New Orleans–mostly a water route. He did this by ship and then came back with another party of Georgia men to California, again by trail.
When gold was discovered, California was nothing more than backwater and wilderness. Nine days after the discovery of gold and after the Mexican-American War, the US was granted California as part of a treaty. Neither Mexico’s or the American government knew anything about the gold.
Only a few hundred American settlers had found their way to California by this time, but the Gold Rush changed everything. By 1852 California’s population ballooned to over 200,000 people.
The gold made California what it is today, only much quicker. California is the only state in the west that was never a territory. It went straight to being a state. The transcontinental railroad was built because it was important that California be tied to the east as quickly as possible.
Today the Gold Discovery park has tree-lined paths so visitors can visit a full-size replica of Sutter’s sawmill and several buildings that once were part of historic Coloma, the town that grew up around the mill. One can pan for gold with hands but only in designated areas. One can step to the edge of the river to the exact place where he found the gold. There is also a gold discovery museum on site.
Chuck and I walked down to the South Fork of the American River to the exact site where the tail race was dug and gold was found. I know that the Russell Party came right here, because that is what they did when they were trying to figure out where the gold washed down from. They were seasoned veterans at this. It was good to stand again where Solomon Roe ‘may’ have once stood.

Day 4 on the California Trail – A Deadly Desert to Cross

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We started our day continuing to travel west toward Reno.   I look forward to seeing what the Humboldt Sinks look like, but we’re not sure we can find a road nearby.  I do know that the settlers followed the Humboldt River until it ran out.  Then they stopped to camp to get ready to cross the 40-Mile Desert.

The countryside began to change.  The vegetation became even more sporadic.

We passed where the Humboldt sinks show up on the map just south of the interstate, but we cannot see a thing.  What we do see, though, looks like desert–like white sand Sahara-like desert without the dunes though.

Before we got to the desert as shown on the map, though, we left the interstate and traveled south where US 95 leaves the going southwest toward Fallon, Nevada. We plan to follow the Carson Cutoff. Within a mile of the interstate there was a sign showing where the Truckee Cutoff crossed. This is the cutoff which took emigrants into central California.

Just a few more miles farther down the road we passed where the Carson Route crossed, too. Other settlers used this cutoff  to go farther south into California. Both cutoffs crossed the 40 Mile Desert, an alkali desert.  We’ll cross it using US 95, though, which most closely follows the Carson Route.

We stopped, and I walked out on the Truckee Route to take a picture of some tracks through the sand. I have no idea if they are part of the original tracks and frankly I doubt they are.   

The Truckee Route (or cutoff) was later the route that the Central Pacific Railroad used when they laid tracks east toward Promontory Point. We crossed the railroad tracks several hundred feet before we got to the Truckee sign. We will return from California in a few days using the Truckee Route, but today we are following the Carson Route.

The 40-Mile Desert was the most dreaded portion of the entire California Trail. The emigrants would try to time it so that they began to cross the desert starting late in the afternoon. Then they would cross all night long–resting in the day and crossing at night, because of the extreme heat, until they got to the foot of the Sierra Nevadas.

There was also a great loss of animals during this section of the trail. There was no water for the entire 40 miles. In 1850 a survey was done that found 1,061 mules dead, almost 5000 horses succumbed, and 3,750 head of cattle, too. Also, 954 graves were found.  It was a tremendous loss of both lives and property in this 40-mile section of the California Trail. 

I stepped out on the surface of the desert here, and it was crunchy under my feet. It seemed a little uncertain as if my shoe was falling through a crust but it only went for a half an inch or so.  

As we crossed the 40 Mile Desert, we realized we were hungry. It is after 1 PM, and there is no place to stop to eat. It only took a little while to cross but the monotony is starting to wear on us. It took us about 35 minutes to cross, but it took the settlers several days.

Just north of Fallon the vegetation began to change noticeably. It was beginning to look like it did just before Humboldt Sink.  

We finally arrived in Fallon, Nevada and found a great little restaurant called The Courtyard Café. We had what I think was the best tomato quiche ever. It was yummy. I have to admit, though, that my mind wandered to what the settlers experienced in relation to our own crossing. Of course, there is no comparison.

After lunch, we took US 50 west out of Fallon all the way into California. This road continued on the Carson cutoff, following the Carson River, which means the emigrants continued to follow water.  This is still desert country, but hillier.
 We took this route because we wanted to follow it a little south of Lake Tahoe just like the settlers and then go on down to Yosemite National Park. I’ve never seen the Lake Tahoe or Yosemite, though Chuck has. He and a college buddy spent a month the summer they graduated touring the country, so he hasn’t seen it in a long time.

But on our way to California we passed within ten miles of Virginia City, Nevada, an old Western town made famous by its silver strike and the television series “Bonanza”. Remember the burning map at the beginning of the tv show?  You can see the Ponderosa, their ranch, which goes to the shores of Lake Tahoe; and there is Virginia City and Carson City in the distance on the same map.  I remembered all of this from watching “Bonanza” as a girl.  I had a huge crush on Little Joe, so you never know from where a kid gets their history lessons.

 So we drove on into Virginia City, which is just off of US 50 about ten miles down Six Mile Canyon Rd. This drive itself is absolutely beautiful. 

Virginia City is where the richest silver deposit discovery in American was made. It is where they mined over $400 million in silver. It became the richest city in America for a short time, and over 25,000 people lived there. It is where the comstock load was.  

Today, it is a Victorian-era town with wooden boardwalks for sidewalks, old west saloons, shops, museums and restaurants. We stopped to have a drink in one of the saloons, and they made a perfect mojito.  After seeing Deadwood a few years ago, I was impressed.  They let the town remain a little western town, instead of making it a gambling resort.

We could have even taken the railroad steam engine to see the surrounding high desert, but we needed to get back on the road. We passed, but it would have been a great little ride.

We drove through Carson City, and we were still on the California Trail. The trail went south of Lake Tahoe. It was easier to cross the Sierra Nevada’s area here for the settlers, so we did the same. 

We are quickly in the mountains and the arid conditions continue at first with the pale green sagebrush growing up on the side of the mountains. But we did notice that it was a little greener than before. And then all of a sudden we started seeing trees.  Real trees.

These are probably lodgepole pines, and don’t you know the immigrants were so happy to see these trees. They saw no shade for probably over several hundred miles.  We were happy to see the trees, too.

As we climbed from the valley floor and farther into the Sierra Nevadas, we entered alpine forests including cedar and aspens. The vistas are breathtaking especially as we climbed along the rim of beautiful Lake Tahoe.  

I am reminded of something that happened to me when I worked at Game and Fish in Florida. We were taking a legislator to see several lakes that needed to be cleaned up of muck. This legislator who grew up in the northeast quickly approved of what we were doing and said, “This is great. I want to see everyone of them as pristine as Lake Tahoe.”  

The fisheries biologist and I both got tickled, because comparing any Florida lake to Lake Tahoe is like comparing apples and oranges. Our lakes are shallow, warm and nutrient rich, while Tahoe is deep, cold, and nutrient deficient.  

But today, I know what that legislator was trying to say. Lake Tahoe is a truly a gem. It is beautiful.

Day 3 on the California Trail – The Drudgery of Following a ‘Pitiful’ River

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Last night on the California Trail we stayed in Elko, Nevada in the Stockman Hotel, a casino hotel. The room was good and roomy; and the breakfast was the best I had on the entire trip. It was complimentary as long as we ordered eggs and meat, oatmeal and toast, or French toast. But it was made to order and hearty.

 
Elko by the way was a true “hell on wheels” town. If you missed the series called “Hell on Wheels”, I suggest you check it out. It was a great series that just finished a few weeks ago, when the two railroads met in the story as they did historically at Promontory Point.  The railroad through here followed the old California Trail.

 
“Hell on Wheels” was what followed the two railroads as they built their way across our nation in the 1860s. Following the laying of the tracks were gamblers, ladies of the evening, and just about anything or anyone else that could make money off the hundreds of men who were building the railroads. As railroad stations were built like Elko, some of these people stayed behind and set up shop–stores, saloons, and cat houses; but most of the horde following the two railroads simply pulled up and moved west or east with the progress of the railroads.  That is why I called these towns “Hell on Wheels” towns, because what stayed behind is what helped found these towns.

 

 

The Humboldt River

 

The Humboldt is a stream that depends on snow fall. Several smaller streams and rivers add to the waters of the Humboldt as it flows west from here. It gets bigger; but then as there are no streams to join it later down the trail, it gets smaller in size as it continues west.  The California Trail emigrants used this river as their highway.

 

 

 

After breakfast, we hit the road headed west still following the river and the California Trail. We are headed to the California Trail Interpretive Center just west of Elko.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Following old trails requires good research especially when you follow a trail that has become basically unknown to most people today. Sometimes you can’t figure it out until you get to the area. This interpretive center certainly helped. We spent the entire morning there.

 

 

 

 

 

The California Trail Interpretive Center was great and helped us tremendously to understand what the settlers went through when they crossed the Great Basin. It told how the settlers prepared for the trip, how they packed their wagons, and even what they had to jettison when the animals couldn’t continue to pull the load. It also explained this part of the country with its lack of water and desert and its long distances.

 

 

 

What a Wagon Hauled

Each wagon hauled about a ton of goods.

 

 

 

A California Trail Wagon Interior

Can you imagine living like this for over seven months. They left at the end of April, as soon as the snow melted; and they arrived in California anytime between mid October and mid November if they were lucky.

 

 

 

There was also a brief part about the Donner Party and how they got themselves into the predicament where they had to eat their own to survive. Incidentally, one of the biggest problems was that their party was dysfunctional from the beginning. There was bickering that caused delays and mistakes in judgment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is also a hiking trail so one can see some of the original wagon ruts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This area all across this part of Nevada is called The Great Basin. Hydrolographicly, it is a vast region between California’s Sierra Nevadas and Utah’s Wasatch Mountains where water drains internally. The water has to go somewhere. Since it cannot reach ocean-bound rivers, it just sinks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is why the Humboldt River disappears into the Humboldt Sink which is really just a marshy area where the water seeps into the ground. It doesn’t look like our sinks here in Florida. The Humboldt River has nowhere else to go.

 
So the settlers followed this ‘river to nowhere’ through the harsh and desolate high desert valleys. To them it was vast expanses of barren, inhospitable land.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today, this area is dotted sporadically with farms and ranches, mines, and the railroads. To us as we sit in our air conditioned car, it is big skies, long beautiful vistas, and a road that stretches over the horizon.  This country is rugged beauty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We stopped in Winnemucca, Nevada for the night.  This is a long drive across this basin.

 

 

 

 

Day 2 on the California Trail – Crossing Jimmy Stewart’s Ranch

by Filed Under: Following Old Trails, Travel 4 Comments

Today, we want to follow the California Trail backtracking through that area we missed yesterday.  We got up and headed north out of Wells to follow the Emigrant Trail Road, also known as the California Trail. We will follow this part of the Trail in reverse of the way the emigrants traveled.

 

 

 

 

We entered using a road a little over 20 miles north of Wells, Nevada on US 93. There is a sign there that says this is the entrance to the Wine Cup/Gamble Ranch. This entrance is just north of Wilkins, Idaho which is just a point on the map. This very large ranch is famous here because it was once owned by Jimmy Stewart.

 

 

 

 

We followed the road, which I had mapped through Google maps. Because we have no service out here, I also made screenshots of the google map route. Third, we had hard copy maps, too, just in case.

 

 

Map of Roads Near the California Trail

We started out today at the red marker and went east.

 

 

The gravel county-maintained road was a good one, but there was no traffic. In fact we only passed one truck in over sixty miles of travel.  It looked like rain all day, but the rain never got to the ground.

 

 

 

 

In just a few miles, we saw where the road turned off going to the Wine Cup/Gamble Ranch house. Here there is a US Bureau of Land Management sign that explains the history of this area. We did not take the road down to the ranch. There is a big lodge in the distance.

 

 

 

 

We can see why Jimmy Stewart loved it here.  Th vistas are beautiful, and don’t you know what it must have meant to him after dealing with the over-populated areas of Southern California.  At the ranch here is where the California Trail pulls off from the gravel road that we’re driving, down to the southwest. This is where the California Trail turned more south leading down to Wells.
Traveling east, from here until the gravel road got to Rock Spring, the road followed fairly closely the California Trail. Signs told us when the trail and the road were the same.

 
I also read that through here the emigrants found spring after spring, some cold and good, some hot, some boiling hot, and at least one ‘stinking’, which was probably sulfur. They named this Thousand Springs Valley, and they followed the Thousand Springs Creek.

 

 

 

 

We followed the Thousand Springs Road, which in some places reads the Old Emigrant Trail on Google maps. We believe that where it says it is the emigrant trail that the California Trail and the road bed are the same. Signs on the roadside tell us this, too.

 
In one place the emigrants reported that a boiling hot spring set next to a cold one, and this is where people stopped to wash their clothes.

 

 

 

 

There is a big trail of dust following us. It is dry, hot and dusty. Imagine what it was like for them.

 

 

 

 

The gravel road continued to be good for about forty miles with the small exception of an area that was sandy. We worried about getting stuck, but bounced on through with little trouble. We realized that there are no cars or trucks of any kind to save us if we get stuck, and there is no phone service of any kind either.

 

 

 

 

But the roads were so good!

 
That didn’t last, though.

 
All of a sudden we came around a curve and there it was. A long stretch of road, about fifty feet long full of sand. I thought, “Oh Crap”. We didn’t have time to stop and thankfully Chuck has learned not stop in these conditions no matter what. His redneck training is coming along quite well.

 
What was worse, though, was that we bounced into a hole or rather a trough. The sand puffed up in a cloud around us as we slogged on through. I’m beginning to doubt this is sand. It seems fine as silt and did not slow us down in the least.

 
The car bounced out of the trough on the other side. The bottom of the trough was rough like it was filled with boulders. We bounced and rattled all the way through. The stuff in our car such as suitcases and bags bounced all around, some landing in the floorboard. But we could not see anything because the trough was filled with this silty chalk-like substance.
Both of us instantly knew that this was not good. How many more of these are ahead?

 
We are now very wary of this road, especially after the pit of chalk we bounced into. We eased along until we saw a trail sign that announced the Rock Spring, which I remembered from researching the trail.

 

 

 

 

The spring rises north of the trail from under a ledge of rock on a mountain ridge. The emigrants who wrote about this place said that they found the spring usually crowded with men, cattle, and wagons. The spring water is warm and still runs today. Many emigrants camped here.

 

 

 

 

While resting at the spring, I read what an emigrant said about the area west of the springs, “…bad as this was we pitched our tent in the dust, for the soil is as dry and fine as magnesia and rises at every step, covering everything.”

 

 

 

 

I think the trough we drove through several miles back might have been filled with what this emigrant described. Our black Toyota Camry is now almost white with the stuff. I also read that this dust chaps their faces and hands. They said the dust was tormenting and had a lime-like appearance.

 
Just after the Rock Springs, the road forks and either way we can see that the road is rough. We decide that this is a good place to turn around and go back.

 
We had to bounce back through the chalk trough again; but it went ok…again. Finally, we reached the road going to the Wine Cup ranch house, and we knew we were almost back to US 93.

 
As I mentioned before, the road here goes southwest, which is the Humboldt Wells route. It begins here at the ranch and descends into the Valley of Humboldt Wells. The Humboldt Wells form the headwaters of the Humboldt River, the river that the emigrants followed all the way across northern Nevada. The wells were a popular campsite for the emigrants.

 
Today these wells are on private property, so we didn’t try to see them; but I did look them up on Google Earth. They are north of Wells and west of US 93.

 

 

Some of the wells are in the channelized square.

 

 

We stopped again at Bella’s for a late lunch. We ended up not needing the sandwich we bought just in case we got stuck on the trail. We’ll carry it on for a later emergency.

 
Our path this afternoon followed the Humboldt River which runs from east to west through very arid land. The emigrants picked up the river near Wells and followed it all the way to near what is called Trinity on the map, where the river flowed into Humboldt sink, east of today’s Reno.

 
We are traveling on Interstate 80 which follows the river, their old trail, and the tracks of the Central Pacific Railroad. Here towns sprung up along behind the building of the railroad back in the late 1860s. I call them “Hell on Wheels” towns, which I’ll explain later. Promitory Point where the two rails met is west of here in Utah.

 
The settlers following the California Trail were not that impressed with the Humboldt River. Several journals called it hot, muddy, and diminutive.

 
The waiter at Bella’s gave us good advice on lodging for this evening. He suggested the Stockman Hotel and Casino in Elko, NV.

 
So we drove west to Elko on Interstate 80 following the California Trail which followed the Humboldt River.

 

 

 

 

Note: My advice to anyone who tries to drive the California Trail between Wells, Nevada and Almo, Idaho is to plan, prepare, and plan again. Part of the road up to Rock Spring is very good, but I have no idea what is beyond. What I do know is that it is desolate. If you break down, you need to be ready to backpack out with food, shelter, and water for days. And I also wouldn’t try it without a four-wheel drive vehicle.

Day 1 on the California Trail-The Parting of the Ways

by Filed Under: Following Old Trails, Travel Leave a Comment

I have gold miner ancestors, and there is a good chance that my fourth great grandfather Roe was a part of the California Gold Rush. So for years I have wanted to follow the California Trail.  This is another group of posts for my “Following Old Trails” series.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Between 1841 and 1869, up to a quarter of a million people sold what they could not carry in a wagon and set out for California. These settlers moved over 2,000 miles to their new homes. Most made it, but some like several of the Donner party did not. They moved seeking new land, gold, adventure, and other reasons that we’ll never know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most of their trail was along the more commonly traveled Oregon Trail, and they entered their California Trail cutoff from many different points along the Oregon Trail. There was no easy trail to California, and they kept trying new trails.

 

 

 

 

 

 

How hard what it to get to California? Well, the first wagon train (the Bidwell party of 39 emigrants) left their wagons near Wells, Nevada and went on to California by foot using packed livestock to get there in 1841. In 1844 the Stephens Party traveling the Truckee route abandoned their wagons near what is today Donner Lake and packed onward. In the spring they went back for the wagons and were the first emigrants to take their wagons all the way to Sutter’s Fort. And we’ve all heard what happened to the 1845 Donner Party.

 

 

 

 

 

 

According to one brochure, in the end the trail looked like a rope with frayed ends, because there so many cut-offs at each end. The Humboldt River being the rope through the high desert of today’s Nevada.

 

 
On this trail were so many places to try their souls. There were prairies, canyons, deserts, and rugged mountains. If the high deserts of the Great Basin with its sluggish, alkaline Humboldt River didn’t get them, then there was the 40-mile desert east of today’s Reno with no water. After all of this, then they had to face the steep passes of the Sierra Nevadas just as winter was coming on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chuck and I decided to use the more commonly used cut-off trail that led from Fort Hall in Idaho and followed the Raft River south. We entered the Raft River Valley from Interstate 86 between Twin Falls and Pocatello, Idaho.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This road on some maps is called the Raft River Road and on others the Yale Road. This is the road that most closely follows the trail. Where it pulls off the interstate is the Yale Road exit. This is where we began to follow the California Trail. We will try to follow as closely to the trail as good roads will allow.

 

 
The road and the trail here passes through eight miles of farmland, and you can see the mountain ranges in the distance ahead. It runs through a very wide valley. There are also mountain ranges on both sides. The terrain in the valley undulates.

 

 

 

Raft River Valley

The Raft River Valley

 

 

 

The colors for us were the same as for the settlers. This is August, about the same time period the settlers traveled through here. The grasses are straw colored from so little rain, and there is soft grayish-green sagebrush everywhere.  Walking through the sagebrush is aromatic.  It is a cloudy day, and the shadows dapple the foothills in the distance.

 

 
Most of these California-bound settlers were from the confining forested lands back east, which must seem oppressive to westerners today. I’m from back east, too; and I’m always captivated by the width of the vistas out here.

 

 
I wonder if the unlimited horizons translated for the settlers into unlimited possibilities. Did it provoke optimism that held them all the way through the long and monotonous journey?

 

 

 

Raft River Valley

Raft River Valley

 

 

 

What made them do it? Word was getting out that there was a better life in California, as good or better than found in Oregon. Wagons with families began to pull off of the Oregon Trail and make their way down to California.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes, these California-bound wagons had other family members who continued on to Oregon. There was a parting of the ways. Maybe the daughter of an Oregon-bound family married a son from a California-bound family or vice versa. Which way did the new family go?

 

 
Sometimes brothers decided to go their separate ways. The Oregon bound followed the Snake River, while the California bound followed the Raft River south and west nearly to its source. Those going to Oregon went right and those going to California went left. Families had to say their goodbyes. More often than not, it was goodbye forever.

 

 
Yale Road follows the Raft River, and the emigrants had been following rivers all the way across the west to reach this point. They followed rivers because they provided water and grazing for their livestock. Upon reaching the Raft, the emigrants turned south on the west side of the river.

 

 
The emigrants reported that the trail here was bad, dusty and “not a breath of air stirring to drive off the dust cloud that hung in the air.” They would move along at about 15 miles a day, a distance that we can drive in less than 14 minutes in air conditioned comfort.

 

 

 

A wagon bed.

A wagon bed — I would sure hate to know that everything I wanted to take had to fit in this space.

 

 

 

If we really wanted to do this trail like they did, then we could hike the trail. At our age, though, I’m afraid we would never finish it. 🤔

 

 
There is a series of books that I’m using to find the roads closest to the trail. It is called “A Guide to the California Trail” by R. K. Brock and D. E. Buck. It gives detailed instructions on how to follow the trail and includes trail narratives from the emigrant journals and diaries. It would be a good series to use to hike the trail.

 

 
Finally, Yale Road crossed over Interstate 84, which runs south to Salt Lake City. Just on the other side of Interstate 84 we turned to the left on State Road 81 and drove for quite a few miles until we got to a little town called Malta. There we turned right on to State Road 77. These are still the roads that most closely follow the trail.

 

 
We realized that Malta was our last place to gas up. There are no reliable gas stations between Malta, Idaho and Wells, Nevada, if we take the dirt and gravel roads that follow closest to the trail, a distance of over 230 miles. These are some of the important facts that the book gives us.

 

 
There are at least two historical markers along the California Trail on State Road 81 . Both explain what it was like for the settlers to travel through this valley. They describe why they needed to follow rivers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not too far down State Road 77, Idaho 77 pulls off to the right. But we did not follow It. Instead we went straight. Within a few minutes we saw a sign that said that this was indeed the California Trail. So we knew we were on the right road. I had a copy of an old California Trail map, and this is how we knew that the road should have gone straight.

 

 
For the longest time, though, we weren’t sure what road number was that we were on. That is until we passed a sign that said we’re on Idaho 77. We just aren’t sure why it had 77 pulling off to the right and going straight, too. Local signs for a Scenic Bypass tried to steer us the other way.

 

 
There is a historical marker on this road that says that this is where the Hudspeth Cut-off joined the trail. Though it wasn’t much of a shorter route, most of the 49ers used it on their way to the gold rush fields. I wonder if this is the cut-off my ancestor’s party used.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So we followed ‘this’ Idaho 77 all the way to Almo, Idaho. A sign in Almo says, “Almo, where the pavement ends and the west begins.” Just below present day Almo is where the Salt Lake Cut-Off met the California Trail. During the Gold Rush, this is where wagons joined them “from the Mormon City”, according to one emigrant’s diary.

 

 
Also below Almo is where the City of Rocks is located. This is a national reserve now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The City of Rocks wasn’t really a city. It was simply a circular valley where the settlers’ wagons stopped to camp. There was fresh water, there were places for their livestock to graze, and there were trees for shade. The settlers called this valley Pleasant Valley, because it was a great place to stop. Several left their signatures and talked about this place in their journals.

 

 

 

Record Rock

The rock where so many emigrants left their signatures.

 

 

 

It was also where there were rocks of every shape imaginable. One emigrant wrote, “We enter a gorge of the hills which in a short time brings us into a large ampitheatre surrounded with rock of every kind of fanciful character.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is also the end of the paved roads for following the California Trail. It turns to gravel at this point, and I found out from a lady at the general store in Almo that even the gravel roads run out. By the way her store is a good place to get a homemade sandwich. Also, the steakhouse restaurant in Almo is good, too.

 

 
On the west side of the trail above Wells, Nevada, the gravel roads are good and follow the trail very closely. We read this in our book.  We will try these roads out later, driving some of the trail from that western side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a map that shows that they crossed from Idaho to Utah to Nevada right at the three corners of these states. There are no paved roads through this area, but I did find on my google map an Old Emigrant Road, which is gravel. This turned out to be the trail itself, which we found later when we drove it from the other side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I first studied this route I thought that they followed Goose Creek all the way through this area. What I had wrong, though, is that Goose Creek did not flow due south next to the Utah and Nevada line. Chuck and I took Utah 30 and discovered that there was a Goose Creek that crossed that road near the state lines. We wondered if this was the route they took, so we were confused.

 

 
But that creek bed was dry. I looked at this area again on Google Earth and noticed that there is a creek bed also called Goose Creek that could be accessed through a pass just southwest of the City of Rocks. This Goose Creek looks greener, which means it may have running water. It runs southwest from past the pass, not south.  You can see on Google Earth where the creek beds were.  This helped clear up some of the  confusion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Using Google Earth, a Utah and Nevada road map, and my own Google map, I believe one can follow the California Trail by gravel roads, a distance of over several hundred miles.  I’m just not sure if you need a 4-Wheel drive or not.

 

 
Chuck and I drove up to the City of Rocks. There were signs that showed that we were on the original trail.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We loved seeing this place. It is an amazing site, and I can only imagine what the settlers thought when they saw its grey granite forms of turrets, pyramids and domes. We drove through the rocks and stopped for many pictures. My favorite was Record Rock on which many of the settlers wrote their names in axle grease.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We followed the road on past the Twin Sisters rock formations through Pinnacle Pass and on for about a mile farther. The pass in their time was just wide enough to get a single wagon through.

 

 

 

Pinnacle Pass at the City of Rocks

Pinnacle Pass

 

 

 

Unlike the movies, the wagons didn’t follow one another in single file, instead they pulled out and moved side by side. It was less dusty this way. Of course, at passes like Pinnacle Pass, they fell into a single file again. It was too narrow to do otherwise.

 

 
By the way just on the exit side of Pinnacle Pass there is a little parking area. A hiking trail to the pass and beyond is clearly marked. On the other side of the pass you can still see the faint remains of the California Trail gradually ascending through the sagebrush into Pinnacle Pass.

 

 
It is between this pass and along the Humboldt River that the emigrants jettisoned some of their treasures such as china, heirlooms, and furniture. Though the average wagon could carry a ton, these items made the load too heavy. Supplies such as food, utensils, stoves, bedding, lanterns, axes, wagon parts, ropes, and livestock were more essential. Women made up about 30% of the travelers.

 

 
Emigrants reported seeing all kinds of these items abandoned along side the trail. One reported seeing Mormons from Salt Lake in the area gathering the items to take back to Salt Lake where there were General stores which sold these items to the passing emigrants.

 

 
Down a ways from the pass the road was getting rougher and rougher. This is not a graded or gravel road, so we turned around. We had the wrong car for this type of terrain.

 

 

 

For us to follow the California Trail farther today, we need better roads or a four wheel drive and more time. It is already 6 pm, too late for over 200 miles of this and gravel. We backtracked all the way to Malta, Idaho, a distance of 24 miles.

 

 
Once we got back to Malta, we turned right off of 77, where Idaho 77 continues north. Then we traveled south on a paved two-landed road that had no sign but showed up on my GPS.
This is beautiful country. We are still in the Raft River valley but going south. It is surrounded by mountains on three sides. This road we are driving goes all the way south where it turns onto Utah 30.

 

 

 

South of Malta, Idaho

 

 

 

The terrain was at first fairly flat with the same straw colored grass lands and grayish green sagebrush. Just after we crossed over the Utah state line, though, the terrain changed to more hills and green cedars amongst the grasses and sage.

 

 
We are no longer following the California Trail as closely, but we are traveling parallel to it at a good distance. The trail is to our northwest.

 

 
The California Trail turned southwest, too; and we did, too.  The trail is on the other side of the Sawtooth National Forest and a narrow mountain range.

 

 

 

The terrain continues to change.  We continued to drive through grasses with less sage and no cedars. There was no traffic. The road ran straight as a board.

 

 
Then, it climbed and made a right turn. To our left we could see a vast white area in the distance. Its end disappears over the horizon. On the map it shows that we are about ten miles north of the Great Salt Lake. There is nothing but flat land between us and the lake.

 

 

 

Great Salt Lake

The North Shore of the Great Salt Lake in the Distance (Utah)

 

 

 

We know that most of the wagon trains did not take this route because they continued to follow water. The road we’re own just shoots straight across dry desert-looking lands.

 

 
Back on the California Trail, the Raft River stopped at its headwaters in the Goose Creek Mountains; but Goose Creek provided another stream for the wagon trains to follow with water and grazing lands. So that is why they are using the land next to Goose Creek that runs north to the south and west through the Goose Creek Mountains.

 

 
This is interesting country. There are towns on these gravel roads that pull off Utah 30. We could see one in the distance just north of the Great Salt Lake. There is also another one on the gravel road that follows Goose Creek. We can see it on a map.

 

 
As we approached the Nevada state line, we see the Newfoundland Evaporation Basin on our left and tall mountains straight ahead. This basin is man-made and designed to capture excess water from the Great Salt Lake.

 

 
We crossed Goose Creek about a mile west of the Goose Creek Rd, a gravel road. It is dry as toast. This is what confused us, because I thought it showed Goose Creek on the map going no where near this road. I have no service or I would recheck Google Earth and other maps. You can see that I was still confused about where the trail went.

 

 
We’re traveling through this area around the first of August, and the settlers traveled through here around the end of August or first of September. I’m wondering if they got any more rain than we’re getting right now. It hasn’t rained a drop on us in several days. This place is dry and hot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just after the creek we crossed over into Nevada. The mountains are all around us in the distance and beautiful. The road is now Nevada 233.

 

 

 

The Nevada State Line

 

 

 

We finally got on Interstate 80 going west and got back off in a town called Wells. We stopped at a fairly good little restaurant called Bella’s in Wells, Nevada just off the interstate. Since it was called Bella’s I ordered the spaghetti. Chuck ordered baked chicken. Mine was great, but he said his was average. My advice is to order the Italian entrees at Bella’s.

 

 
After the settlers left the City of Rocks in Idaho and quickly crossed a small part of what is today the Utah/Nevada state line, they followed various streams south west for several hundred miles until they got to Wells, which was an area of natural water wells.

 

 
The Humboldt River’s main stream begins from one of these wells. A well around here is what we call a spring back east. I guess if this were back east, then Wells would be called Springs.

 

 

 

Day 6 & 7, Lewis & Clark Meet the Nez Perce

by Filed Under: Following Old Trails, Travel 6 Comments

Lewis & Clark probably would have liked to spend the night in a bunkhouse, but I’m not them.  Got up early and had breakfast at the Rack & Reel Restaurant at the Lewis & Clark Resort. Then I hit the road. I’ve decided to drive a new route back east today, working my way up to Weippe, Idaho and then on up to Interstate 90 which runs into Missoula, Montana, where I’ll spend Wednesday night. At least that was my plan.
Weippe, Idaho is on the Weippe Prarie, and it is close to where the Lewis & Clark expedition stumbled out of the Bitterroot Mountains half starved and tired to the bone. They had finally crossed the treacherous Rockies.
The road ‘up’ to Weippe was not only north but up, as in high in altitude. The road climbed in many switchbacks up to about 7,000 feet. The views were awesome.

Weippe Prairie looks just like it sounds. These are high fields of wheat and meadows at about 3,000 feet in altitude.  I don’t think the wheat was here with Lewis & Clark came through.

When the expedition got here in 1805, though, they found a village of Nez Perce living in the forests and meadows.

Weippe Prairie

Clark and an advance party came upon three Nez Perce boys who hid behind tall grasses. Clark pulled out some beads and offered a gift, whereupon the boys took them to their village. These were the first white men the villagers had ever seen before.

The Nez Perce were good to the Lewis & Clark advance party and sent back food for the rest of the expedition. The expedition spent several days with these people while they prepared to push farther westward.
Clark wrote in his journal the exact measurements for the place where this occurred. Then modern day surveyors used these measurements and marked the place with a small monument. It is on a little county road. I used signs beginning in Weippe to show me how to reach the monument.

Upon leaving Weippe, I noticed a Nez Perce / Clearwater National Forest road that cuts back across the mountains from Weippe to Missoula. Since it was still about 11 am, I decided to go that route.  After all the Lolo Motorway is in the Clearwater Naitonal Forest, and this was the route Lewis & Clark took.

The drive for a good 30 miles was paved and absolutely beautiful. The late summer wildflowers lined the roadbed with reds, yellows, purples and whites. The white Queen Ann’s Lace are especially beautiful in the sunlight.

Then the road turned into limestone but was still well marked and maintained. I just had to follow Forest Road 250. I stopped at a small turnout by a creek and had lunch, a can of unheated but pre-cooked chili soup. If I get the pop top cans, I don’t need a can opener. I also had some carrots to munch on and made some instant tea in one of my water bottles.  It is important to note that I also had enough in my cooler for dinner and breakfast, too.  I carry food with me most of the time because restaurants in country like this are few and far between.

And there are no gas stations or stores of any kind for over a hundred miles through this forest.

After lunch, I continued Road 250 which followed either a stream or river. I began to realize that I’m looking at some prime flyfishing waters. I’ll have to go back and check the map to see what streams I’m following.

Every once in a while I see a lone fly fisherman standing in the stream, so these streams are not crowded. I guess this is because it is a weekday, and I drove so far already to get here.
Finally, about 2:30 pm I passed the Kelly Work Center site which is a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service property, but it is closed. I was hoping to go in and get a map.
I drove several hours already, but it is slow going. The roads are maintained but they are a wash board in places.
I was fairly certain that Forest Rd. 250 would get me all the way through, but I wanted confirmation. Also, my GPS got screwed up when I inadvertently touched the touchscreen, and it lost the coordinates of Missoula.
The GPS continues to work even with no service. It just shows you when you leave the roadbed. It gives no other instruction nor does it show towns, road numbers etc; but I’ve lost everything, and there is no service to get it back.
I’ve had no cell service since I left Lolo yesterday morning, except for a very weak Wifi service at the resort last night and this morning. It was so weak that I couldn’t drop a post, but I could set up my mapping.
Just past the work center I came to my first real decision. It says that if I take a left this is Rd. 250 going to Superior, Montana. On the map Superior is the closest town to the national forest eastern boundary, but this way seems to be less easy.
The easier and better maintained road goes straight. I do remember seeing that a forest road does come up on SR 12, the Lolo Pass Road, but I’m less sure where the better road ends up.
So I decided to stay on Rd. 250. This road goes all the way through Black Canyon, and the stream is the North Fork of the Clark River. I’ve actually heard of this stream, but don’t remember why. I began to see a lot more fly fishermen, though; and there is much more traffic.
The driving is much more difficult. I’m driving even slower and have to pay closer attention. There was a landslide in one place that looked like they had just repaired it.
This is a forestry service maintained road, but later I would find out that they have trouble keeping it maintained. I crossed two low streams that ran across the road through a structure called an articulated ford. Rocks had fallen from up above, and I would occasionally see a rock in the road that I had to avoid.

An Articulated Ford. Not much water crossing it today.

I hardly got over 20 miles per hour so it would be a very slow 35 miles. Plus I stopped to take pictures.
The sun was very bright, and I was constantly running in and out of shade and sunlight due to the fir forests and open areas. In one place just as I was leaving shade and before my eyes adjusted, I hit something which gave the car a jolt. I worried that there was an unseen rock in the road, but the car seemed fine so I kept going. I also didn’t see it in my rear view mirror.
I stopped at a campsite to use the restrooms. I wondered how much farther I had to go.
About ten more minutes after the restroom stop I noticed that one of my indicator lights was on. I had no idea where the maintenance manual was. I looked for it in the glove box earlier, because I wanted to adjust a side mirror a little better; but I never found it.
Then a little diagram came up on my dash that showed that the Passenger side front tire was low on air pressure. Darn. My tire was going flat, and that’s when I hit another rock. Not good. It all happened within a couple of seconds. I guess I didn’t see the rock, because I was still trying to assess the indicator lights.
I wish I could say that this was a comedy of errors, but I’m still not laughing. That’s because this is Thursday morning, the next day; and I’m writing this from the USDA’s Forest Service Kelly Work Center where I spent the night.
I’ve always known that the Forest Service both USDA and Florida’s are especially great people; but after yesterday, I just cannot say enough good things about these folks.
But first let me explain how I got back here, because I was a good hour and a half past this work center and toward my destination when I got the flat.
I pulled the car off to a little turnout. The road was just a little over a one-lane road here but I am in the forest so it is cool and shady. The road was one-laned for quite a while. I moved everything from the trunk to the backseat. This is a limerock road and my luggage is black. I was still concerned about keeping them clean.

My Little Fiat 500

Then I opened the bottom of the trunk and found no spare. Instead there was this little machine still covered in plastic wrap. It said in big letters, “Please give this to the tire repairman.” Crap! Of course, that was the nicer word for what I really said. What tire repairman! I’m in the middle of the wilderness.
So I removed the plastic wrap and there was a little brochure that explained that this little contraption was to be plugged into my cigarette lighter, then into my tire, and it would blow up my tire while filing it with a chemical that would fix the hole in the tire. Shut the front door! I didn’t even know this existed.
So I did what it said. It didn’t work.
Next it said, “if it doesn’t work, drive the car slowly ten meters and do it again.” Crap, again. I wish I had listened better when Coach McRae taught us the metric system. And I can’t go to Google it like I usually do. So I drove the car down about ten yards, and tried it again.
As I waited the prescribed five minutes again while the little machine ran, two men in a pickup truck stopped to help. Thankfully, they did, because one of them realized right away that the fluid needed to repair the tire was not getting into the tire. He opened a valve in another hose, which was never mentioned in the directions.
He also noticed that the tire had a puncture wound in its side tire wall when the fluid began pouring out its side. He didn’t think the fluid could help in this situation. We kept trying to air the tire up, but it didn’t work. I simply needed the missing spare.
He reminded me of my Dad, who could figure out just about anything given time. I studied that little brochure, but I still got it wrong. He studied the gadget instead and figured it out.
So Kelly Lynch and his friend gave me a ride down to the ranger’s station. Both were fly fishermen and retired. I had a feeling they were when I saw how they were dressed. We talked fly fishing a little on the way back, and I found out that this stream was a very good stream for anglers.
It was at least an hour and half drive one way back to the ranger station, and thank goodness that is where they took me. I’m just so sorry, though, that I messed up their late afternoon fishing. They were just out riding to look for a good fishing spot, and instead they were stuck driving around a helpless female. I really hate that my helplessness got between them and their fishing.
I got to the Kelly Creek Work Center and two forest rangers named Sarah Wyman and TC Peterson helped me contact AAA. They said that they had to send someone out of Idaho to pick me up, but Idaho was four hours behind me. I was only about an hour and a half from Superior, Montana.

Kelly Work Center

Why not send someone from Montana? The dispatcher for AAA said that they wouldn’t come from Montana because I was still in Idaho.
So the tow truck will take four hours to get to me, then it will take me all the way back to Orofino, Idaho, which is even farther west than where I started this morning. Also, because it gets dark soon and because these are rough roads for night driving, the tow truck cannot make it to me until about 9 am in the morning. Because he knows my predicament, he said he would leave at 5 am.
I’m thinking about what it will be like to sleep in a Fiat 500, which is what I’m driving; but the Forest Service suggested I stay in one of their bunkhouses in a borrowed sleeping bag. It is supposed to get quite cold tonight. So that is exactly what I did. I slept in their bunkhouse. Sarah even brought me a tea bag to help calm my nerves.
I had the bunkhouse all to myself, because everyone was away. I know that the Hamilton fire has gotten pretty big and is threatening another town. I wondered if that was where everyone was. This is a massive national forest.
Finally, about 9 am in the morning, the tow truck driver Dan Gunter from Orofino Body Shop drove all the way from Orofino, picked me up at the Kelly Work Station, drove another hour and a half to my car, picked up the car, and then drove me and the car all the way back four hours west.
But it still isn’t over! At the tire place in Orofino, they didn’t have the tire I needed for replacement, so we had to drive even further west to Lewiston, Idaho.
Now I am right at seven hours away from Great Falls, it is 2 pm, I lose an hour crossing the mountains, and I fly out of Great Falls by 6:20 a.m. tomorrow. And I still need to eat three meals and sleep. Oh boy! This is not looking good.
Meantime, I have had no cell service for over 24 hours. I made one contact with Jamie’s cell and left a message just in case anyone is looking for me.
Then I have about a 200-mile drive back across the Rockies with still no cell service, but the good news is the tire place was waiting on me and changed the tire in record time. I am out of there and on my way by 2:30 pm. Love Les Schaub Tire Service both in Orofino and especially in Lewiston. Great guys!
This area of Idaho reminded me of my home county, only this is a distance out here of about 200 miles. Everyone seemed to know each other. The forest rangers knew Dan personally. Not only has he towed several people out of here, but he also hunts and fishes in the national forest. We got stopped twice in the forest by other people that he knew.
When we drove through a little small town on our way to Orofino, someone saw us passing and commented to him on the radio. They said, ” Hey Dan, that’s a new car you’re towing there.” He said, “Yep.” They said, “What kind of car is that?” Just general gab. Another guy made comments several more miles down the road. Dan and I talked all the way to Lewiston. The whole experience made me feel at home.
To make a longer story shorter I got to Great Falls at 10:30 pm. Whereupon I still had to pack. I started the next day at 3:30 am.
I had planned to follow Lewis’s return trail back as far as Great Falls, but I’ll save that for another trip. He and Clark split up at Traveler’s Rest and took different routes back to the mouth of the Yellowstone River on the Missouri where they next met. I chose Lewis’s return because I followed Clark’s return on an earlier trip.
So this is the end of my travels on this portion of the Lewis & Clark Trail.  I’ll add a new section to my blog called “Following Old Trails” when I get back home. This section will be where these type of posts are archived.

 

 

Day 5-Lewis & Clark Cross the Rockies

by Filed Under: Following Old Trails, Travel Leave a Comment

First, I apologize for not being able to get this to your earlier, but under the circumstances, I believe you will understand. I will run this post this morning, and the other post this afternoon if I have a good wifi or cellular connection. That has been the problem for the past few days. Day 6 could have been a nightmare, but I’ll let my next post explain what happened. 
August 2, Tuesday

I stayed in Missoula, Montana on Monday night, which is less than ten miles away from Lolo. So this morning I circled back to Lolo to tour Traveler’s Rest State Park. As you may remember, this is where Lewis & Clark camped before crossing the Rocky Mountains using an ancient trail, an old Nez Perce trail.  

Even today one can see why this became a resting spot not only for the Corp of Discovery but also for the Salish and several other tribes who were friendly to each other. There are tall grasses, shady cottonwood trees, and plentiful game. There is also a sparkling clear stream that Lewis named Traveler’s Rest which runs through the ancient campsite. The stream is now called Lolo Creek. 

Lolo Creek at Traveler's Rest

Lolo Creek

Speaking of plentiful game, In the middle of the day I saw a deer walk across the field in front of the state park entrance, which is on SR 12, the road that runs westward across the Rockies. Above this road on the northern ridge line runs the ancient trail mentioned earlier. The Nez Perce used this trail to get to the eastern plains’ buffalo grounds.

When the expedition got here, they would have noticed several tepee poles which were left here as community property; but the Corps made it a practice to always set up camp away from the Indians’ camp, but still nearby. They camped across the creek. It was in September of 1805. 

The Salish Camp At Traveler’s Rest

First, I listened to a brief lecture from a knowledgeable staff member in the visitor’s center. She talked about the area and the expedition, and then I toured the small museum in the center.  

Most fascinating is an 1803 gun on display. Lewis’s journal says that he acquired fifteen rifles from the US Armory and Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry before departing. We don’t know what model, though.   

An 1803 rifle that may have belonged to the Lewis & Clark Expedition

We do know that the Armory began production of a new shorter version of Model 1792 in late 1803 or early 1804. In late 1803 Lewis had already left west for the expedition. This rifle here on display is one of the first fifteen and would have been a prototype and produced earlier than standard issue.  

Many believe that Lewis would have wanted the lightest and best rifles available. It is believed he may have gotten fifteen of these to take west. This rifle is serial #12. It was bought in an online auction. The new owner noticed the significance of the serial number, whereas its previous owner did not.

Afterwards, I went on their self-guided half mile trail loop using interpretive stops and a brochure to learn more about their encampment. At the first stop I was joined by a gentlemen who turned out to be a park ranger.  

I was the only person walking the loop, so he joined me; and we walked the rest of the loop as he explained what took place at each stop. It was good to meet Mike and discuss the expedition with an expert.

What makes this state park unique in the Lewis & Clark story is that this is where archeologists have archeological proof as to the exact place where they camped. As was usual on the expedition, it was a military style encampment.  

This is where Lewis & Clark’s campsite was at Traveler’s Rest.

They can tell where the three kitchens of the campsite were placed. Because two of the men were taking medicine for intestinal problems and because that medicine contained mercury, they know where the latrines were located, too. The pills they took were called Dr. Rush’s Bilous Pills, also known as thunderclappers. I’m afraid that their pain was our gain.

This is where the two latrines were at Traveler’s Rest.

Also, the men used the fires to make repairs and bullets for their guns, and the archeologists found a small lead puddle in one of the fire sites.  

They stayed here three days so they could prepare themselves for their westward journey over the mountains. They hunted game, and probably gazed at the snow-covered Lolo peak in the distance.  

Today, next to the campsite sits a very tall and old witness fir tree. It was here long before Lewis & Clark passed through. They did a core sample on the tree to determine its age, and it was there when Lewis & Clark came through here in 1805. It witnessed their historical expedition.  

This lodgepole pine at Traveler’s Rest witnessed the camping of Lewis & Clsrk

The Corp of Discovery broke camp and with their Indian guide left Traveler’s Rest on September 11, 2005 turning west to take the Nez Perce trail over the daunting Bitterroot Mountains, two hundred miles of mountainous terrain. Today, much of this trail is called the Lolo Motorway. I struck out on Montana 12 traveling west, too. 

The Lolo Motorway Trail is an upper road that follows the ridge line, but it is a 100-mile long dirt and gravel road. If this were the beginning of the vacation, I would do it in a heartbeat; but tomorrow is my last day and I have to be as far back as Missoula by tomorrow night. Also, I didn’t find out about it until about noon today, too late to do it today.

I’ll save this for when I do the next segment of the Lewis & Clark Trail. I’ll begin that one in Missoula and end it near the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon.

SR 12 runs through a long valley before climbing up to Lolo Pass. Lolo Creek runs through this valley, and the expedition followed this creek until they got to Lolo springs where they camped and then moved on to cross Lolo pass.  

At Lolo Pass there is an Idaho Rest Area and Information Center. I walked through their small interpretive center and walked around outside, too. This would have been a good place to take a hike.

On the other side of Lolo Pass they began to go up high to follow the ridges on the ridge line. My drive down below is through great forests and running next to the Lochsa River. It is a beautiful drive. The sun came down at just the right angle to create thousands of diamonds on the water.

It was explained by one of the roadside signs that the land up here is laid out in a checkerboard pattern with every other plot of land owned by the federal government and Plum Creek Timber Company. I remembered them telling me how Plum Creek lands were bought from the railroad who received the lands from the federal government when the railroads were built out here. I used to represent Plum Creek before the Florida legislature.

But Lewis & Clark’s Shoshone guide brought the expedition down at one point near what is today Whitehouse Pond. This was a Lochsa fishery. They thought he was lost when he had to take them back up north, back to the high ridges. Lochsa Canyon which State Road 12 follows had too many cliffs and gorges for a horseback ride down below.

I am beginning to get a little worried as it is approaching 6 pm, and I’ve seen very few places to dine and lodge for the evening. I got lucky, though, because I rolled into Kamiah, Idaho by 6:30 pm. I had a Mexican meal and stayed at the Lewis & Clark Resort, which has been converted into a motel/KOA campground. It was very nice to be in a campground where I’ve always felt the safest. I took a long walk around its streets and it is quite cool and nice up here. A dry front is moving through and it is really nice to hear the wind in the pines and aspens. Aspens have a different sound in the wind. It is more of a rustling sound.  

I drove over five hours (with lots of stops, though), and am still not out of the Rockies. Poor Lewis & Clark. They must have thought that they would never get out of these mountains.

Speaking of Lewis and Clark, I’ve already discussed William Clark, but the success of this expedition included both men. The two men complimented each other’s skills and traits, providing for strong leadership. 

Meriwether Lewis was quiet, intense and serious, the opposite of Clark’s outgoing and gregarious temperament. Both men were resourceful, intelligent and kept good journals of the experience.  

Meriwether Lewis

Meriwether Lewis

Lewis was over six feet tall and stayed in great physical shape. Like Clark he was also a skilled back woodsmen. He was fiercely loyal, disciplined but also flexible. He had a sharp eye for flora and fauna, and his detailed journal entries reflect this. He also learned herbal medicine from his mother, which would also be useful to the expedition.  

I am very close to the town which is located where the Corp descended down from the ridges. I plan to end my westward journey there tomorrow. 

Day 4:  Lewis & Clark Meet Sacajawea’s Family

by Filed Under: Following Old Trails, Travel 1 Comment

Using Lemhi Pass, Lewis with an advance party of three men crossed the Rockies on foot. Imagine when he realized that the Rockies were not like the Appalachians which are a single range of mountains with many passes. The Rockies are many ranges with few passes and rivers full of boulders and rapids. They now knew that there was no easy portage, there was no northwest passage,and they had to have horses to cross over.  

While Lewis was returning and still on other side of Lemhi Pass he ran into some Shoshone women gathering food, and they took him to their village. There he met Chief Cameahwait. This village turned out to be the Lemhi Shoshone, Sacajawea’s people, though Lewis wouldn’t know this until later.

He, his three men, and Chief Cameahwait with fifteen warriors crossed back over Lemhi pass to the east and traveled back down the Beaverhead. They met Clark and some of his men near Camp Fortunate.  

Imagine everyone’s surprise when Sacajawea and a childhood friend of hers immediately recognized one another. And then imagine Sacajawea’s happiness when she realized that Chief Cameahwait was her brother. It is said that she cried tears of joy. That is when the expedition realized that these were Sacajawea’s people.  

She told her brother that these white men needed to cross the mountains and needed to trade for horses. He told her that he would trade horses for guns.

Sacajawea was still a young girl but also a young wife with a baby during the expedition. She did not speak English but her husband Charbonneau could speak Shoshone. He did not speak English either. His native tongue was French. 

I learned a lot about her while at the museum in Great Falls. I even got to try on what she would have worn. It was made of animal skin and was heavy. Good for winter, but not so sure about summertime.

I find it peculiar that their journals always refer to her baby as hers but not Charbonneau’s. I’ll let you speculate on that peculiarity on your own.  

The expedition traded for horses from Sacajawea’s people, and then they left behind their canoes and some supplies which they hid for their return trip. Now they are traveling with loaded packsaddles. They crossed Lemhi Pass, and Sacajawea was truly back home, though just for a visit.

In Salmon where I spent the night, there is an Interpretive Center which highlights her life and the lives of her people, the Shoshone, which are also called the Snake Indians. As soon as I heard this I wondered if this is because they lived in the land of many snakes. I sure saw a lot of those sidewinders in a very short length of time yesterday.

So I left this morning from Salmon, Idaho to follow north the trail on the Salmon River, just as the expedition did. The river is very navigable here, but won’t be soon up ahead.

Late in August of 1805 Clark left with an advance party to explore this river and the rugged canyon it flowed through. He came back and reported that the Salmon is almost one continuous rapid and passage with their canoes is entirely impossible.  

It is 110 miles north to Lolo Pass where they will cross the rest of the Rockies. The drive by the Salmon River and its forks was really nice. I realized that I could have driven farther last night. There are several nice inns and lodges on the river plus restaurants and at least one gas station about twenty miles north of Salmon. 

On their way north they were looking for a way over Idaho’s mountain barrier. They struck out without a trail to follow, but their experienced Shoshone guide showed them the way. They followed a difficult ridge top divide. The mountains here were treacherous, and they were mostly wet and cold as they crossed the snow covered ridges. They experienced the season’s first snow.

I was on US 93 as it climbed through the mountains, and this drive is beautiful. It keeps switching back and forth and climbing higher into a big ponderosa pine and fir forest.  

The experts who have studied the Lewis & Clark journals agree on most about the Lewis & Clark Trail, but not this part through the mountains. It was a difficult crossing as the mountains closed in around the creek, and they had to walk the horses on the steep sides of the mountains. Several packhorses slipped, fell and injured themselves.  

The path they took is lost, and this is why the area is called Lost Trail Pass. I stopped at a rest area here. It sits on the Idaho/Montana state line at the Continental Divide. It is beautiful up here with yellow flowers everywhere. I packed a lunch and ate it at one of the picnic tables while Reading a book. It is called “Learning to Die in Miami: Confessions of a Refugee Boy” by Carlos Eire. I’m a long way from Miami. But it is a very good book.

Left the pass and came down into the Bitterroot Valley. Here is where the expedition found the Salish Indians who were very good to them. The place was at Ross’s Hole and the meeting took place on September 4, 1805.  

The expedition was very tired and hungry. The Salish gave them blankets and some fresh horses in a trade. One of the journalers said that these were the most likable and honest “savages” he had ever seen.  

These Indians were named the Flathead Indians by Lewis. Their heads were not shaped any differently so we’re not sure why he gave them this English name.

This valley is where these people spend their winters. They gathered bitterroot, wild onions and everything else to prepare each year. 

There were problems with the language though. No one in the party could speak their language, but there was a Shoshone boy living with the tribe. He could speak both the language of the Salish and Shoshone, so he and Sacajawea could communicate.  

She in turn translated to her husband what he said, her husband translated it in French to one of the members of the expedition, who then translated it into English for the rest of the Corps. It was slow going but it worked.  

The Salish people gave them their knowledge of the area, including information about the trail that would lead them over the mountains ( Lolo Pass) and to the Pacific Ocean. The tribe told the Corps that they were the first white men any of them had ever seen.

I ran into a lot of smoke north of Darby, Montana. There is a forest fire nearby. It got so smoky that you could not see the surrounding mountains in one area. To the left side of US 93 going north all the roads for about 5 miles were blocked off by law-enforcement. I also passed by a staging area for forest fire equipment and people. This must be quite a fire.

I finally got to Travelers Rest which is very near Lolo, Montana. This is where Louis and Clark came to find the trail crossing over the Rockies. They camped here for three days from September 9 through the 11th in 1805. 

They named it Travelers Rest because this is where they stopped to prepare, rest themselves, and rest the horses before attempting to go farther. They also stopped here to confirm that there was an Indian trail up the Blackfoot River to the Pacific Northwest.   I got here too late to tour the State Park, so I’ll have more on that tomorrow,

Game was plentiful so they ate well. To the west you can see snow covered Lolo Peak. They decided to follow the old Indian trail and with their Shoshone guide the 33 members of the expedition left here on September 11, 1805. 

They would also stay here again on their return in the end of June, 1806. 

 

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