Gilman Ranch
The Gilman brothers had left the family homestead in Bartlett, New Hampshire, in 1854 and drifted west, stopping first in Iowa and then moving on to Nebraska. In the early summer of…
Jules Stretch
This stretch of the road, from Julesburg to "French Louie's" [Pole Creek Station] was known as the "Jules Stretch." The stretch of road going from the Pole Creek crossing and…
Mile 284: Lone Tree Station
“In time or course climbed slightly to a flat upland covered with grain. This was evidently Nine Mile Ridge, where in staging days stood Lone Tree Station. The solitary tree…
Mile 238: The Narrows
“According to our maps, “the Narrows” was the next place of interest. It is mainly notable because, at this point on the Little Blue, the emigrants seemed to forget all…
Mile 228: Kiowa Station
“Near Kiowa Station the nature of the terrain changed. The hitherto smooth slopes broke into rain-gutted saddles and deep-washed gullies. The wagons had steered a dizzy course like a line…
Little Blue Valley
“For years Marysville, Kansas, marked the end of the truly settled country; but the Little Blue Valley, so, charming and so fertile, sheltered a sort of border zone of ranches…
The Big Blue
“Except under abnormal conditions the camp site under these old trees [by the Big Blue] was an oasis, comfortable and even luxurious with fresh-water clams from the river, berries from…
Rolling Prairie
“Our way led over a succession of grassy swells spaced at intervals with breezeless hollows. What a country to have traveled before the day of the graded road and the…
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…