The Great Platte River Road . . . and Big Rocks

The North Platte River runs the entire length of Nebraska, almost right through the center of the state. It’s a braided stream, a river or stream with many intertwined channels separated by islands or sandbars, so it looks somewhat like the strands of a braid. The folks heading west followed the main channel of the river, where there was grass for the oxen and mules, water for everyone, and fairly flat going. The government built Fort Kearny along the North Platte fairly early—1848, my guidebook tells me—to help protect the travelers along the Oregon and California Trails. Fun fact, both of those were the same trail until far western Wyoming, and they were on the south side of the river. When the Mormons started heading west to Salt Lake City, they walked with handcarts along a trail on the north side of the river, a route that was called the Mormon Trail, and met up with the other two trails around what’s now the border of Nebraska and Wyoming.

North Platte River in Nebraska

The town of Kearney is named for Fort Kearny, although obviously the founders of the town were not good spellers. But it’s an okay place, and we found an RV park where we could do laundry and flush out our camper’s tanks, which still had some antifreeze residue (you use a kind of antifreeze that isn’t poisonous in an RV’s tank, but we still wanted it out). We had a nice dinner at a restaurant that claimed to have opened in 1890, but it was definitely in a new building. The food was delicious, and the place was air-conditioned inside, which we appreciated as it was a very hot day on the plains of Nebraska.

A side note about the town of Kearney—it calls itself the Sandhill Crane Capital, but I find it hard to believe there are more sandhill cranes there than there are at Whitewater Memorial Park in Liberty, Indiana, in January. The water is low in the lake then and there are sandhill cranes as far as you can see, and you can hear them quite loudly too. In any event, Kearney promotes its sandhill cranes, and they are immortalized in a sculpture across the top of the famous Kearney Archway that stretches over Interstate-80.

The Kearney Archway, with the sculpture
of the sandhill cranes flying above it

From Kearney we headed west along U.S. 30, which follows the Mormon Trail more closely than the Oregon Trail (the Mormons traveled on the other side of the river rather than with the rest of the wagon trains heading west through Nebraska). Towing our camper, it’s nicer to travel on U.S. routes than interstates, and the old Oregon Trail along the southern side of the North Platte is now I-80. We went through towns that all had Pony Express stations, and back at Hollenberg Station we had learned that the Pony Express ride is re-enacted by dozens of riders every June. We missed them at every station, but we knew they were riding hell bent for leather not far away, so that was cool.

At Ogallala, Nebraska, we turned northwest to follow the trail past some intriguing rock formations, including Courthouse Rock and Jailhouse Rock. The emigrants on the Trail gave the rocks those names; many said that Courthouse Rock looked like the courthouse in St. Louis, which did not have a dome at that time. Further on, we saw Chimney Rock, so named because it is a tall pillar of sandstone on top of a large mound of sandstone. The Indians had another name for it, according to my nephew; they called it Elk Penis Rock. Both are certainly descriptive of the formation.

Jailhouse Rock at left, Courthouse Rock to its right, and the road sign sign about them

Chimney Rock

Then we approached Scott’s Bluff, which is a really really big rock formation. And it’s a national historic site, so we stopped at the Visitor’s Center and read all about it. Of course we took some photos, too, before heading for the hills north of the town of Scottsbluff (again with the spelling/punctuation whimsy) to a Nebraska state park called Lake Minatare before a thunderstorm hit.

Scotts Bluff, on the western border of Nebraska,
was a major landmark for travelers on the Oregon Trail

We got set up, right on the shore of Lake Minatare (the location of the only lighthouse in Nebraska) and decided to make dinner inside since we could see the storm approaching, and the wind had kicked up halfway to cyclone by that time. It rained a bit, but mostly it was windy, with lots of lightning and thunder in the distance. We survived it just fine in the Scamp.

Lake Minatare was high and came right up near
our campsite, but we were on a rise, so no worries.

Lake Minatare lighthouse

We backtracked down to Scottsbluff, the town, and Scotts Bluff, the rock formation, to pick up U.S. 26, which would take us across the border to Wyoming, where our first stop of the day was at another fort, Fort Laramie. Fort Laramie was originally built in 1832 as Fort William, by a fur trader named William Sublette, who sold it to the American Fur Company two years later. The fort was always a popular stopping place for travelers along the Oregon Trail, but as the numbers increased, there was more conflict with the Indians in the area, and the army took over the fort and yes, fortified it, and stationed infantry and cavalry there. We wandered all around the fort, which has some buildings that were rebuilt from the shabby state they had fallen in to, and some ruins of the barracks and other buildings. It was interesting to see, along the banks of the Laramie River.

 
The Fort Laramie site has both ruins of barracks and reconstructed officer housing

One thing they don’t mention in the many interpretive signs at Ft. Laramie is its association with the TV show F Troop. Yep, the old sitcom had its beginnings in an ill-fated Army regiment that had been stationed at a nearby fort under the command of William Fetterman. A Lakota Sioux band, led by the warrior Red Cloud, defeated Fetterman’s men in a battle, killing Fetterman and all 81 men under his command. Some of the non-military members of the fort made it back to Ft. Laramie to report the battle, known as Fetterman’s Fight. Apparently, at least according to a book I read, the Fetterman regiment was known to be fairly incompetent, and early television writers had heard stories about the F Troop, for Fetterman, and thought a comically inept Army regiment would make a great idea for a television comedy.

Our next stop was the famous wagon ruts of Guernsey. There’s a place where you can actually see ruts that were carved into sandstone by the wagon wheels, and of course nearby there is a Pony Express marker and a grave of one of the emigrants. There are a LOT of graves along the Oregon Trail; one out of ten travelers died on the trail, and we saw one quote that said you could wake up feeling fine, start becoming ill at midday, and be dead by dark. So that was a downer, but as I pointed out, it may be even more amazing that nine out of ten travelers made it to their destinations in Utah, Oregon, or California.

The wheels of hundreds of thousands of
westward-heading wagons cut deep ruts
in the sandstone at Guernsey, Wyoming

Final Oregon Trail site of the first day in Wyoming was Register Cliff, where emigrants (and later folks, too) carved their names in the soft rock of the cliff near Guernsey. After that we headed to Guernsey State Park, only to find it was a series of canyons with campsites at the bottom of each, and no way we were going to make it down and then up again with the trailer. So we made a reservation for a hotel in Casper and headed that way. We found out that it was Rodeo Week in Casper, so the hotel was not cheap, but there was a hellacious storm around 6:00 pm, not long after we arrived, so we were kind of glad to be inside.

Emigrants carved their names in Register Cliff
on the Trail in Wyoming