Yoking Oxen
When Ford demonstrates the historical method for yoking a well-trained team, he places his oxen—in this example, Thor and Zeus—side by side in the driving position. Standing beside the team,…
Steers Make the Best Oxen
Bulls can be trained to pull a wagon, but steers (that is, castrated males) are preferred, largely because they grow larger and stronger. . . . “Because he has longer…
Oxen Are “Educated” Cattle
"The oxen that drew emigrant wagons west were just everyday domestic cattle, Bos taurus, that had been trained to pull under yoke. That training is what distinguishes an ox from…
Rate of Travel With Oxen
"The journey [to California or Oregon] was some fifteen-hundred to two-thousand miles across plains, mountains, and desert—at an ox pace of two miles per hour. Including rest breaks, the average…
Crossroads of the West
The state’s southern red rock country serves as a cinematic backdrop for movies about 19th century cattle drives, crime and justice, and cultural conflicts that play out in California, Wyoming,…
End of the Pony Express
But Indian resistance and financial woes, serious as they were, did not bury the Pony Express. Technology did. About two months after the first mochila left St. Joseph, Congress authorized…
The Pony Express Takes Over Chorpenning’s Route
Happily, as it turns out, for the Pony Express, the Central Overland Trail was also developed as a stagecoach and mail-by-mule route by a hardworking competitor, George W. Chorpenning. Chorpenning…
Mile 1165: Ham’s Fork Pony Express Station
Granger Stage Station State Historic Site/Ham’s Fork Pony Express Station Locale (Granger, Wyo.) was an original stagecoach station built by the Ben Holladay Stage Company in 1862. It later was…
Mile 937: Horse/Greasewood/Sage Creek
Horse/Greasewood/Sage Creek was a Pony Express and stagecoach stop. This is also where the Martin handcart company, struggling west through early blizzards, first met rescue wagons from Salt Lake City.
Mile 939: Clayton’s Slough
West of Rock Avenue on the Oregon Trail in what’s now central Wyoming, emigrants came to an odorous, swampy place where their livestock often got stuck in the mud and…
Mile 937: Avenue of Rocks
About nine miles west of Emigrant Gap, the Oregon Trail wound through a narrow gap between two ragged ridges of sandstone and shale rocks, upended strata we now would call…
Mile 930: Red Buttes Station
Located 10 miles from North Platte Station and 12 miles from Willow Springs Station about 200 feet southwest of the Red Buttes Oregon Trail Marker and south of the old…
Mile 930: Red Buttes Station
Red Buttes Crossing/Bessemer Bend (south of Casper) is one of the places where travelers forded the North Platte River— then 300 yards wide—for the last time and started the push…
mIle 917: Fort Casper
Site of Fort Caspar/Platte Bridge Station, Fort Caspar Museum, 1847 Mormon Ferry, and Guinard Bridge. Fort Casper was a focus of 19th century emigration, commercial, and military activity. In 1847, Brigham…
Mile 890: BYX and Other Historical Facts
MORMAN SETTLEMENT: Anxious to obtain better mail service from the States, Hyrum Kimball, acting as agent for the Mormon BYX operation headquarters at Salt Lake City, was low bidder for…