Days 5,6 - Casper WY to Soda Springs ID
Day 5
| Miles for the Day: | 155 |
| Total Trip Miles: | 2186 |
| Start Point: | Casper, WY |
| Sun Rise: | 6:08 AM MDT |
| Start Altitude: | 5236 feet |
| Start Weather: | At 6:00 AM MDT, the temperature was 26.9 degrees with 78 percent humidity. The conditions were clear. |
| End Point: | Lander, WY |
| Sun Set: | 8:08 PM MDT |
| End Altitude: | 5342 feet |
| End Weather: | At 6:00 PM MDT, the temperature was 63 degrees with 31 percent humidity. The conditions were overcast. |
Day 6
| Miles for the Day: | 337 |
| Total Trip Miles: | 2522 |
| Start Point: | Lander, WY |
| Sun Rise: | 6:16 AM MDT |
| Start Altitude: | 5383 feet |
| Start Weather: | At 6:00 AM MDT, the temperature was 47 degrees with 68 percent humidity. The conditions were overcast. |
| End Point: | Soda Springs, ID |
| Sun Set: | 8:20 PM MDT |
| End Altitude: | 5780 feet |
| End Weather: | At 6:00 PM MDT, the temperature was 52.8 degrees with 38 percent humidity. The conditions were partially cloudy with a wind speed of 10.1. |
Table of Contents
Google Map Track Log
Killed Here By Indians, Lander WY
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Killed Here By IndiansIn Memoriam Dr. Barr, Jerome Mason, Harvey Morgan, Killed Here By Indians June 27, 1870
This story is interesting and I took some excerpts from the following website: cowboystatedaily.com
Harvey Morgan didn't know trying to visit a widow would turn him into a ghoulish artifact, but history doesn't recognize when it's forming.Bobby here: soldiers found and buried the bodies. The bodies rested for 37 years.Morgan drove a wagon from South Pass City on a sighing June day 153 years ago to meet with the widow Schaeffer for business, or romance, or both. Mrs. Schaeffer's husband had just died. She lived alone on a modest farm in a valley about 38 miles from South Pass City.
Two men accompanied Morgan on the road from town, Doc Barr and Jerome Mason. They all set out for a valley of sagebrush and sparse farms near the U.S. Army's Camp Brown. The region would later incorporate under the name Lander, though early locals called it Pushroot.
"There were two stories," Todd Guenther, Wyoming anthropology expert and retired history professor, told Cowboy State Daily. "One is, he was going down there because he was courting her. Another is, he was going down to visit her because he was going to buy that farm."
At 25 years old Morgan was a jack-of-all-trades, a business owner, and an enterpriser. He had plans to open a saloon in downtown South Pass City. And he was popular. The local newspaper tracked his comings and goings from the nearest commerce hub, Salt Lake City.
"That was part of the news of the day," said Guenther. "Now it's considered an invasion of privacy."
Numerous news stories tracked Morgan's activities. Everyone spoke highly of him, Guenther said.
Barr and Mason may have been involved in the ranch deal, if there was one, or they may have had business of their own in the valley.
It was June 27, 1870 – one of the finest dates Wyoming has to offer, weather-wise. None of the three men survived it.
The native war band attacked the three men.
Morgan and the others fought back with one faulty rifle, according to Guenther's sources.
The band cinched around them. The three defenders threw the wagon box off its running gear, crouched under it and fired the occasional shot through a seam of light. They only had a handful of bullets.
They were overrun, killed, mutilated and butchered.
The Indians' ritual mutilation wasn't some dark indulgence as portrayed in old Westerns, said Guenther. It was a religious custom.
"Their beliefs were that after you killed an enemy, you mutilated their body (so that) if you met them again in the next life they'd still have those wounds and wouldn't be able to hurt you," he said.
Morgan's killers found his wagon hammer, a multipurpose tool for hammering things and hitching the wagon's body to its yoke. The hammer, or "queen pin" had a spike on one end and a hammer head on the other.
It would fit perfectly in a warrior's hand, with its spike protruding from between his clenched fingers.
The hammer remains in Morgan's skull 153 years later. It's his defining adornment.
Sharp divots along the bone show that Morgan's attackers also scalped him.
Scalping dates back to North American prehistory, said Guenther. Some books claim the natives learned the custom from Europeans, but it was a custom long predating white migration to the continent, he said.
Young men dug trenches for water lines in 1907. Old men sat around and watched the young men work, "because there was no other entertainment," said Guenther.The diggers unearthed human bones. The old men remembered, then, that the site was Camp Brown's military cemetery.
A digger unearthed a skull with a wagon spike lodged clean through it.
"That was Harvey Morgan," mused the old men, according to Guenther. Then they said something along the lines of: "Boy we sure paid a heavy price for settling the West."
Wise said the men had E.F. Chaney, a settler now in his sunset years, verify that the skull was Morgan's.
Ed Farlow, another early pioneer, reburied the bodies at the Mount Hope Cemetery, said Wise.
But they kept Morgan's skull.
People were already murmuring about starting a museum. Harvey Morgan gave them the impetus to build the Pioneer museum. When they finished the Pioneer Cabin and its exhibits a few years later, Morgan's skull became the first artifact.
"They thought this was a great way to tell a story about how dangerous life was in the pioneer days of Lander," said Wise.
But Morgan's skull also traveled the world with Ed Farlow, his son Stubb Farlow and Tim McCoy in 1925 and 1926. The three were silent-film actors through the 1920s, performing alongside several hundred Shoshone and Arapaho actors, Guenther said.
The three actors went on tour, lodging in Paris for a winter and performing stage screenings. They took Harvey Morgan's skull with them.
"He was much more widely traveled in death than he was in real life," said Guenther.
Wide-eyed European audiences of 100 years ago beheld the same deathly artifact that now sits in Lander's Pioneer Museum.
Lander Cut-Off on the Oregon Trail, near South Pass WY
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Lander Cut-Off on the Oregon TrailIn 1858, this ancient path, which had been used by Indians, explorers and mountain men as a short cut to the Snake River country was developed by Frederick Lander in to an alternate route on the Oregon Trail. What is commonly called the Lander Trail or Lander Cut-Off starts 9 miles to the southeast at Burnt Ranch (directly behind this sign), crosses the Sweetwater River 6 miles to the northwest, and continued along Lander Creek for 13 miles to the Continental Divide at Little Sandy Creek, the headwaters of the Pacific Ocean. From there it travels west across the Green River Valley, the Wyoming Range, and the Salt River Range before entering present-day Idaho. The Cut-Off rejoins the original Oregon Trail near Fort Hall.
This wagon road was favored by travelers for many reasons. The cut-off save as much as 7 days travel compared to the old route though Fort Bridger. avoided the expensive ferries across the Green River to the south, and bypassed the 50-mile waterless desert of the Sublette Cut-Off. Its longest waterless section was only 10 miles, and it had access to abundant grass and firewood. The Lander Cut-Off was used by an estimated 13,000 emigrants its first year, with 9,000 of them signing statements of support for the road at Fort Hall. While use dwindled after completion of the trans-continental railroad in 1869, the trail was still used by emigrants into the 20th century and played a role in the settlement of the Upper Green River Valley.
Sand Springs, Boulder WY
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Sand Springs - A Stop on the Oregon TrailThis site is a crossing of the Lander Cut-off, the northern fork of the Oregon Trail. Originally called the Fort Kearney-South Pass-Honey Lake Wagon Road when it opened in 1858, it was the first federally-funded road project west of the Mississippi River.
F.W. Lander mapped this new route, shortening the trip to the Pacific by 5 days and avoiding a ferry crossing to the south where price gouging was alleged. Sand Springs was the only reliable water available to emigrants between Muddy Creek, 8 miles to the east, and the New Fork River, 10 miles to the west. Until the coming of the railroad in 1869, up to 300 wagons and thousands of cattle, horses and mules may have passed here in a day. The trail ruts visible behind this sign and continuing over the next ridge are reminders of the largest known voluntary migration in world history.
From homesteading in the 1880s until use of the automobile in the 1920s, Sand Springs remained an important watering hole for travelers and stock on the north/south New Fork to Rock Springs wagon road.
Public access to Lander Trail ruts is behind you to the east, just across U.S. Highway 191 on Bureau of Land Management ground. Please respect private property and historic artifacts.
Building the Lander Trail, Big Piney WY
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Building the Lander Trail
The swale (small trench) running left to right in front of you is a remnant of the old Lander Trail. It is unknown if this swale formed by repeated wagon use or during trail construction. Unlike all previous western emigrant trails - which evolved from Indian trails - the US Government surveyed, engineered, and constructed the Lander Trail
New Wagon Road
In 1858, a crew of 115 men built 230 miles of new trail. They moved more than 62,000 cubic yards of dirt and rock - equal to 6,000 modern dump truck loads - and cleared 34 miles of heavy timber and willows. Construction cost $40,260, finished ahead of schedule, and came in under budget.
1850s Road Construction
Using techniques learned from building railroads back east, laborers first used mules for driving plows to break up the hard soil here. They then moved and leveled the dirt with mule-drawn buck and scoop scrapers. Men with picks and shovels also helped in rocky patches.
Summer Job
According to road superintendent Lander, laborers were paid $30 per month. Lander formed road construction crew made of "lumbermen and bridge builders" from Maine, Mormons for Salt Lake City, Utah, and "destitute men who we met along the road" that he felt "compelled to feed and shelter."
Big Hill, Montpelier ID
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Lander Cut-Off on the Oregon Trail
On their way west to Oregon and California, emigrant wagons often crossed high ridges in order to avoid gullies and canyons.
When he came here in 1843, Theodore Talbot noted that he "had to cross a very high hill, which is said to be the greatest impediment on the whole route from the United States (over 200 miles east of here) to Fort Hall (over 120 miles farther west). The ascent is very long and tedious, but the descent is still more abrupt and difficult." Many wagons had to be let down by ropes tied to trees that disappeared long ago.
McAuley's Road
Coming west with Ezra Meeker in 1852, Thomas McAuley decided to build a road to let emigrants bypass Big Hill.
Worst of all Oregon Trail descents, Big Hill needed replacement. Eliza McAuley reported that her brother Tom "fished awhile, then took a ramble... and discovered a pass by which the mountain can be avoided by doing a little road building." With an emigrant crew, he opened a wagon toll road that followed current Highway 30. After 1852, no one maintained the new route and it fell into disuse.
Smith's Trading Post, Montpelier ID
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Smith's Trading Post
In 1848, Pegleg Smith established a trading post on the Oregon Trail at Big Timber somewhere near here on the river.
Some travelers called it "Fort Smith", though it had only four log cabins and some Indian lodges. Packing a plow and tools from Salt Lake City, Smith (a mountain man who had to amputate his own leg 20 years before) tried unsuccessfully to raise crops. But he did a big business when the California gold rush of 1849 brought thousands past here; 49'ers reported that he had many horses and cattle and was making $100 a day.
Day 6
Elevation Changes During the Day
The day started at 5,383 feet and ended at 5,780 feet. The highest altitude was 8,209 feet and the lowest altitude was 5,383 feet.
| Days 3,4 - Blue Springs MO to Casper WY |
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