The Emigrant Trail

Tuesday May 17th  A couple of hours ride along route 26 brought us to the town of Laramie.  We crossed back over the North Platte towards Fort Laramie about a mile further on.

Fort Laramie was originally established in 1834 as a fur trading fort called Fort William after its founder William Sublette.  It was sited on the Laramie river near where it joined the North Platte, the river being named after Jaques La Ramee, a French Canadian mountain man who mysteriously disappeared in the area in 1820.   The name Fort Laramie gradually came into use and in 1849 it was taken over by the United States army to protect pioneers on the Oregon, California and Mormon trails.  As such it played a significant role in the subsequent Indian wars before being abandoned in 1890.   However, a variety of original buildings such as the barracks, captain's and officers' quarters have survived.  In 1938 the site was designated a National Historic Site, since when most of the buildings have been restored.   

It was also the location for a Pony Express station.

 

Sadly I could not spare the time to make the small detour to look round the fort, particularly as I had become confused with the road names on the ground which did not concur with my map!  I phoned Stephanie for advice, and she and Elise turned up with trailer and two horses to accompany me all the way to my day's destination at Register Cliff!   Here we are riding along Tank Farm Road, which follows the approximate line of the Oregon and Pony ExpressTrails.

Stephanie is riding her grey horse and Elise is on her appaloosa Cinnamon.  The white objects in the distance are tanks on the Guernsey compressor or pump station which compresses gas for transportation along pipe lines.

 

Riding round the top of Register Cliff, looking to find a way down!... 

Register Cliff is a large sandstone cliff where emigrants used to inscribe their names and sometimes messages, thus acting as a 'register' of people who passed through and a sort of nineteenth century version of facebook.  Many of the inscriptions date from the 1840s and 1850s, the earliest known being from 1829.

 Register Cliff was on the ranch of Charles Guernsey, after whom the nearby town of Guernsey was named. The ranch was later owned by Henry Frederick who donated the cliff site to the state of Wyoming, and Register Cliff was itself placed on a register in 1970 - the National Register of Historic Places.  Many pioneers stopped to camp, rest and graze their animals at the foot of the cliff, and I was privileged to be allowed to do so by Doug Frederick, a descendant who now runs Register Cliff ranch.

The horses were settled into pens at the ranch buildings overlooked by the cliff, and I was treated to a meal in Guernsey with the Fredericks by local NPEA member Vicky Hood.

Swallows nests clinging to crevices in the rock face.....

 

 What a lovely sight to wake up to - a superb view of Register Cliff from my tent on the morning of  Wednesday May 18th...

It is not even raining, and Barb Frederick has brought me a cup of coffee from town!

 

The site of Sand Point Pony Express station is about half a mile further west on the banks of the River Platte, on the far bend in the road in the photo below...

You may just be able to see the white dot to the right of the road which is the Pony Express historical marker - for some reason, most likely senility, I omitted to take a photo of it. It was also called Nine Mile house, Ward's or Central Star.  Some time before the pony express station, there had been a trading post and stage stop here.

 

The area is awash with evidence of the thousands of emigrants who passed this way, and only a couple of miles further on we came to the notable Oregon Trail Ruts State Historical Site. Traces in the prairie soil of the huge emigrant traffic have largely disappeared due to erosion or more importantly the plough, but here the deep ruts carved out by the pioneers wagons are preserved in the soft sandstone rock, an amazing legacy from a period of dynamic change in the west.  Incredible to imagine the numbers of ox and mule wagons that must have trundled over the brow of this hill to create this trough...

Riding west along Wendover Road, which follows the line of the Oregon and Pony Express Trails, we come over the brow of a hill to see this sight...

..far in the distance rises the cloud capped summit of Laramie Peak, signalling that we have reached the Rocky Mountains.  After weeks of plodding across flat and rolling prairie country I experienced the thrill that must have been experienced by pioneers all those years ago. And it would have been much the same view in front of the Pony Express riders galloping from Sand Hill to Cottonwood station.

A wind pump promises a welcome water stop.....

 ..though it was not long before we arrived at the homestead of NPEA member Carl...

..who gave me a warm Wyoming welcome.