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Descriptions

Upper California Crossing

The Upper Crossing of the South Fork of the Platte apparently went by several names including "Laramie Crossing," "Goodale's Crossing," "Morrell's Crossing," and later "Julesburg" or "Overland City," although Julesburg came to…

Slade at Hockaday

Under the Hockaday regime Joeeph A. Slade hnd served as agent of the division from the Upper Crossing of the Platte to South Pass. When the "C. O. C." was organized Benjamin…

Richard Burton

Richard F. Burton, English author, traveler, and explorer of India, Arabia, the Lake region of Central Africa (the discoverer of Lake Tanganyika), and explorer of the highlands of Brazil, was later knighted…

Coronado on the Plains

Under the burning-glass July sun they went on across the green, rolling land-ocean under the unbounded sky, past the Great Bend of the Arkansas, left the river, traveled northeast till…

Scott’s Bluff

Miller's paintings of Scott's Bluff and Chimney Rock are reproduced in our plates. The convention of Western books requires me to remind the reader that the former were named for…

Mountain Neurosis

Like Narcissa and Eliza the women were casting the lines that emigrant wives were to follow - botanizing, collecting curious pebbles, gaping at the scenery, putting on their nightgowns and…

Clothing of Four Bears

But actually Four Bears [Mandan chief] had more iron in him than that. When he felt the fever come upon him he dressed in his most ceremonious garments. (Shirt of…

South Pass 1836

the last tangential touch of the Sweetwater, in the greenery of its shallow gully where it comes down out of the hills, and we know that it camped for the…

Summer in the Higher Places

About the middle of July there comes into the air of the high places a golden emptiness, a washed look infinitely beautiful but melancholy with a premonition of fall. The early light…

Hunting Buffalo

Stewart may have had many motives for coming to the United States, but probably foremost among them was a desire to experience what seems to have been the finest of all sports…

Platte River

Campbell's party reached the Platte well to the east of the forks, took the South Platte at the forks, and presently crossed to the North Platte. For a hundred miles the country…

The Prairie in Spring

They were on the route which Ashley's men had established and along which the United States was to follow its western star. (Oregon began at the Continental Divide, that is, halfway through Wyoming,…

The Posing of Contrary Biased Opinions

For the posing of contrary biased opinions does not necessarily result in truth, not does the citing of a charge with its counter-charge, or a pious delusion with the facts…

Loss of Romance of the Trail

And partly what Burton saw along the trail reflected the change that had come in the trail itself. By 1860 much of the romance had gone out of an overland crossing, along…

Last 36 Miles to Salt Lake

By the testimony of every diarist, the thirty-six last miles, from the Weber to the Salt Lake Valley, were worse than anything on the whole road. It was as if…

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About

Scott AlumbaughIn early March 2020, I decided to bikepack the length of the Pony Express Trail in Summer 2021, following the Pony Express Bikepacking Route, a nearly all off-road route created by Jan Bennett. You can learn more here >

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