Mile 970: Independence Rock
"The great granite loaf of Independence Rock signaled temporary relief from the thirsty barrens, for it stands where the emigrant trail meets the Sweetwater River. Trail tradition held that reaching…
Mile 927: Emigrant Gap
"This leg of the trip, Emigrant Gap (today sometimes called the Poison Spider Route), was a bitter introduction to what lay ahead: long stretches of hot, hilly trail with little…
Droppings of the Lesser Redneck
"Interstate 80 swings well south of the emigrant trail through the Truckee Dunes today. Only the hiss of windblown sand disturbs the graveyard quiet now. Jeep tracks follow the trail across…
Period Rush
"As a channel evolves into ever more extreme loops, eventually two separate bends may approach one another and join. When this occurs, the river takes the shortcut and establishes a…
Rivers in the Great Basin
Scattter a few dozen stubby pencils onto a table. Turn each one in place so it points generally north or south. These are the mountain ranges of the Great Basin. Tempt…
Basin and Range
"The termination Farallon Plate subduction probably made the Basin and Range. As North America closed like a sliding trapdoor over the Farallon plate, the plate did not go quietly into the mantle…
Green River Buttes
"Throughout the Green River Basin, many "elevated buttes of singular configuration" rise from the rolling plains, sticking up like flat-topped warts on a sagebrush skin. They stand several hundred feet high, with eroded…
Trail Options West of South Pass
"From South Pass, emigrants had several options for reaching California. They could go to Salt Lake City via the trail to Fort Bridger, and then take either the Salt Lake Cutoff…
Mile 1075: South Pass
"The Sweetwater Valley took the emigrants smoothly uphill 1oo miles to the Continental Divide at South Pass. This fortuitous gap in the Rockies exists because of geologic happenstance. A Wind River-sized mountain…
Land Between the North Platte and the Sweetwater
"Once across the [North Platte] river, the emigrants faced 50 desiccated miles of sagebrush plains as they passed overland to the Sweetwater River. It was a bleak crossing—as Henry Bloom described: No…
Black Hills
"The name (no relation to South Dakota's Black Hills) comes from the dark stands of pine, spruce, and cedar that dot the slopes. Travelers on both the north and south sides of…
Chimney Rock
"Massive in scale, each monument towers hundreds of feet above the floor of the North Platte Valley. Each is made of stacked layers of sandstone, siltstone, mudstone, and volcanic ash. Differential erosion…
BLM Land
"It was immediately clear that after nearly a thousand miles of travel across the trail we had found the one asshole in a hundred who lacked the hospitality we had found everywhere…
Mile 642: Bridgeport
"After Bridgeport, Nebraska, the landscape changed dramatically, from grasslands to spare, dry sagebrush country, and the soil turned from sandy brown to pink. We were entering the magic, pastel geology…
Mile 1655: Rock Springs Pass
"Now comes the 2,000 foot climb up and over Rock Springs Pass, the highest point along the entire Pony Express Trail, higher even than South Pass in the Rockies, or…