Over the Simpson Park Range

Wednesday October 6th.  At the Pony Express convention I had met up with Arthur Johnson, former President for the Nevada division of the NPEA, and he had kindly agreed to guide me along a tricky stretch of the trail through private land. This ran from Dry Creek, crossing the Simpson Park range and up the Simpson Park canyon to Emigrant Pass and on to Austen.  As the sun rose he arrived on cue with his pinto horse in the trailer.  Lucy watches as Arthur saddles up his horse for what would prove to be a very long day in the saddle...

 Climbing up into the Simpson Park Range along the Pony Express Trail...

A couple of mule deer had just jumped out of a brush thicket and bounded up the hill.
The tops of the pinyon pine were heavily laden with cones, and Arthur stopped to pick cones and extract pine nuts which we were able to nibble as we rode along.
Coming over the top of the Simpson range and starting to descend the steep rough track clinging to the escarpment on the other side, this was the breath-taking view out over Rye Patch canyon to the Simpson Park canyon beyond....

In the distance lies the Toiyabe Range.

 

Picking our way down the lower slopes of the Simpson Range into Rye Patch Canyon..



Arthur is recounting the tale of when a rider on a recent Pony Express re-ride took a wrong turn in the dark and ended up entangled and freaked out in some old wire from the transcontinental telegraph line that used to run this way.  After some nasty moments the horse managed to extricate itself and both horse and rider survived relatively unscathed after their trauma.  And the mail carried on!

It was the transcontinental telegraph which of course caused the demise of the Pony Express, but followed in its wake in 1869 when it was replaced by a new multi-line telegraph beside the first transcontinental railway.  It was the remains of this line which caused the unfortunate incident, and the remains of telegraph poles can still be seen along the cutting through the forest which the trail now follows.  Here is Arthur by an old telegraph pole which had been wired to a sapling for support....

 The sapling has grown into a tree, but the two can still be seen side by side.  Behind him is the cutting which we would follow, with the Toiyabe Range on the horizon.
Another few miles further on and we had crossed a low divide from the Rye Patch canyon into the Simpson Park canyon.  Riding the trail up Simpson Park canyon...

Near the site of Simpson Park Pony Express station...

The original building was attacked on May 20th 1860 and the station keeper James Alcott killed and mutilated, the day before the attack on Dry Creek. William Streeper, who carried 'heavy mail' by mule and was also a part-time Pony Express rider, described finding travelling westwards to find the station burned, the station keeper dead and the stock gone.  He went on to Smith Creek but later returned to Dry Creek only to find the same situation there.   

 By the time Burton went through, the station was being rebuilt.

Watering the horses in Willow Creek which flows down Simpson Park canyon......

It was getting late by the time we rendezvoused with Lucy on the Grass Valley road to the north of Austin.  Arthur needed a lift back to Dry Creek to fetch his trailer, so I ponied his horse most of the eight miles over to the little town of Austin via Emigrant Pass.  Arthur loaded up his horse to drive home in the dark while we made our way down to the Austin fairground to find a camp spot.  Many thanks Arthur for a great day through some stunning scenery!

Thursday October 7th was a welcome day off for all of us. Lady relaxed in a corral while Lucy and I found somewhere to shop. wash clothes and take a shower, after a hearty American breakfast.

 

  Look behind you!!....

...but Lucy seems too aghast at the scary witch and spiders to notice that John Wayne is shneaking up on her.  North America goes a bundle on Halloween, and they even have stores devoted entirely to Halloween decorations, costumes and other paraphernalia.   In the café I particularly enjoyed the hairy tarantula on a Heath Robinson string and pulley system which dropped down from the ceiling when you opened the door...

 

This unassuming little building at the top of the main street has quite a heart-warming tale to tell....

In 1864 (not long after the end of the Pony Express) it was a grocery store run by democrat Reuel Colt Gridley. During the Austin mayorial elections of that year Gridley bet a Republican friend that whoever backed the losing candidate should lug a 50lb sack of flour through town.  Gridley lost, and did his stuff to the strains of the town band.  That might have been the end of the entertainment, but it was then decided to auction off the sack in aid of the oddly named 'Sanitary Fund', a worthy organisation founded to help disabled Civil War veterans, presumably not just with hygiene issues. But after being auctioned off for $250 the sack was returned to Gridley to be re-auctioned.  Suddenly everyone wanted to be involved and the sack ended up being auctioned off all round America, raising $275,000 in the process!  The story achieved lasting notoriety when Mark Twain wrote about it in his book 'Roughing It' which describes his time in the West.  

 Gridley and his patriotic sack of flour.....

Nice to think it was used to help both sides.

 

Our day off in Austin also enabled us to wait for the arrival of Mike and Bonnie Robinson, who were transporting Mo over from Salt Lake City so my cousin Rowena (who rode with me for large sections of my Eurasia ride) could join me for a couple of weeks across Nevada.  They had additionally very generously offered to collect her from Reno airport the next day. And Petra Keller of the Nevada division of the NPEA was going to come along as well.  I had been very grateful to her for sending me a digital file showing satellite locations logged on the 2016 ride which had been indispensable in planning out my route.