Mile 1870: Reese River
"Below us, 'Reese's River' Valley might have served for a sketch in the African desert: a plain of saleratus, here yellow with sand or hay, there black with fire, there brown where the…
Mile 1215: Needle Rocks and Echo Canyon
"After fording Bear River [At Evanston, Wy?] this part of the land was quite a grave-yard we passed over rough ground, and, descending into a bush, were shown on a ridge to…
Mile 1165: Ham’s Fork
"At midday we reached Ham's Fork, the northwestern influent of Green River, and there we found a station. The pleasant little stream is called by the Indians Turugempa, the "Blackfoot Water."
Black’s Fork
"Emerging from the river plain we entered upon another mauvaise terre, with knobs and elevations of clay and green gault, striped and banded with lines of stone and pebbles: it was a barren,…
Mile 1140: Green River
"The Green River is the Rio Verde of the Spaniards, who named it from its timbered shores and grassy islets: it is called by the Yuta Indians Piya Ogwe, or the Great…
Mile 1113: Big Sandy
"After a long stage of twenty-nine miles we made Big Sandy Creek, an important influent of the Green River; the stream, then shrunken, was in breadth not less than five rods, each =…
Sweetwater River
"The Canadian voyageurs have translated the name Sweetwater from the Indian Pina Pa; but the term is here more applicable in a metaphorical than in a literal point of view. . . . There…
Mile 238: The Narrows
"The regular correspondent of the St. Louis Missouri Democrat went over the line in June, 1861, and wrote from Denver to his paper (issue of July 9): 'Taking into consideration the distance…
Forks of the Platte
"The Platte River divides at N. lat. 40 05' 05", and W. long. (G.) 101 21' 24". The northern, by virtue of dimensions, claims to be the main stream. The southern, which…
Platte River
"The Canadian voyageurs first named it La Platte, the Flat Kiver, discarding, or rather translating after their fashion, the musical and picturesque aboriginal term, 'Nebraska,' the 'shallow stream:' the word has happily been…
Cottonwood Trees
"In the centre of the bottom flows the brownish stream, about twenty yards wide, between two dense lines of tall sweet cottonwood. The tree which was fated to become familiar to us…
Mile 197: Big Sandy Station
"A little after midnight we resumed our way, and in the state which Mohammed described when he made his famous night journey to heaven—bayni 'Z naumi wa 'I yakzan—we crossed the deep shingles,…
Bad Medicine
" The name of the stream [White Man] is from the Sioux language. In that language Wah-seecha means 'white man.' 'Seecha' means 'bad' and 'Wah' means medicine; therefore a white man was, in…
Lodgepole Creek
"Our Camp at Pole Creek the night' of November 4, 1864, was very bleak and dreary. Pole Creek was a vast trough in the plateau. It had a bed wide enough for…