Oregon Trail — Partnered Pony Blog

At O’Fallon’s Bluff in Nebraska, inlaid brick shows the line of Oregon Trail wagon wheel ruts on the ground, with wagon sculptures showing the path across the landscape.

My pickup just told me it has been ten thousand miles since I began moving Willowtrail Farm from Colorado to South Dakota. Some of those miles were also accumulated on my trip to St. Louis and back on a business trip. I have two trips to Colorado remaining to complete my move, so I will be servicing my truck before them. As I thought back over those ten thousand miles, I remembered noticing on some routes the regular distances between small settlements, and I smiled with the connections of these travel intervals to ponies and other equines.

The first route where I had that recognition was between Fort Collins, Colorado and Laramie, Wyoming. I know it was a stagecoach route, so I appreciated the 8-12 mile distances between dots on the map such as Tie Siding, the state line, Virginia Dale, and Livermore. Those distances were what the teams of horses pulling the coaches could sustainably work at speed. Today most people whiz by what used to be important stops on overland travel.

On my trip to St. Louis, it was my personal travel interval between rest areas that brought another smile of recognition. Today the interstate highway through Nebraska follows the Platte River and portions of the Oregon Trail. One rest area was at O’Fallon’s Bluff, “one of the most difficult and dangerous spots on the trail,” according to the interpretive sign. The landscape was still marked by wagon wheel ruts, and the spot was commemorated with brick laid to show the line of the ruts. Wagon sculptures showed the lay of the trail. The Pony Express, the short-lived horseback deliverer of mail, also went over O’Fallon’s Bluff.

Another rest area, near Lusk, Wyoming, also celebrates its connection to historic stagecoach travel. It is a particularly beautiful – and well-placed – spot on my numerous journeys between Gould and Hot Springs. The grave of a renowned stagecoach driver is there. The interpretive sign says, “Here you stand on the Cheyenne-Deadwood Trail over which freight wagons and stagecoaches traveled between Cheyenne and the Black Hills gold mining area from 1876 to 1887.” The railroads put an end to stagecoach travel.

The former Hecla, Nebraska on Highway 2 is one of a line of settlements approximately 8-12 miles apart, suggesting a travel interval from the time of equine-powered transport.

Highway 2 across western Nebraska was the most recent route where I noticed travel intervals reminiscent of equine-powered travel. Though the interpretive sign for Hecla, Nebraska indicated that a rail stop was the raison-d’être of the former town, the travel intervals between settlements on that lonely road certainly suggest an equine-based mode of travel.

The sign at O’Fallon’s Bluff says, “Although the danger and hardships faced by early travelers no longer exist, the Great Platte Valley route remains an important modern thoroughfare across Nebraska and across the nation.” The same is true for so many of the routes that we now travel at high speeds, rarely noticing how equine (and oxen) powered travel shaped development along the way.