The Treacherous Bitter Roots! Cora Leland

The Bryan Stage 1872

As the years of development in the West rolled on, even remote places like Wyoming Territory experienced change.  While railroad travel wasn't that well established yet, the Upper Plains were influenced by the expanded travel.  Wyoming built new roads to connect all the new towns springing up.

Some of these new towns were simply posts for storing government rations for Native tribes  and the expanding Army. Raids on these posts were thrillingly depicted in fiction, especially the raids that took place during the desperate times at the end of the Indian Wars. The government seemed to be sitting on a fence, pulled between opening every inch of land to prospectors, and agreements they'd signed before gold was discovered.  Much of that land was already staked out and under contract. But there were new obligations to meet and people to house.

Mining and railroads

These little towns and posts did get connected, and lower elevation was accessed through the South Pass route. 

All this time, the railroads continued to expand this undeveloped territory, working faster than would last into the future.  The difficulties were understandable, looking back at them.  The original plans were laid out on a straight line, but contractors insisted on a more twisting route.  

While the obligation to get these railroads finished was sometimes postponed, the tracks were laid.  Difficulties came because of the difficult terrain and the huge sums that had to be raised -- "hastily laid track...and congressional corruption."

Back in 1868, when  trains came to Laramie (close to what would be the capitol city of Wyoming, Cheyenne) the town springing up was nick-named "hell on wheels."  It had taken thousands of people working and then living in tents all along the line.  In fact, Laramie, Wyoming was made up entirely of tents.

Keystone Dance Hall and surrounding tents, Laramie 1868 

"End of the tracks" towns dotted the territory.  A surprising number of businesses moved along with the railroad construction crews, but some stayed. Even some of the citizens moved when the railroads started being constructed elsewhere.

But South Pass was not forgotten.  Twenty miles from that spot, a city was built that marks the beginning of women's rights.

South Pass City, 1870

Hundreds of thousands of new settlers had used the trails that traveled over the continent and went through South Pass to reach the far West.  In Wyoming's new legislature in 1869, a saloon-keeper named William Blake introduced legislation to give voting rights to women.  And Wyoming had the first woman to serve in public office, Esther Hobart Morris. She became Justice of the Peace in Feb. 1870.

South Pass, itself, enabled those thousands of emigrants to avoid frost-bite and even death as they traveled over the mountains.  Unlike the treacherous earlier route, Bitter Roots, South Pass offered a direct road Westward. 

Pioneer photographer William Henry Jackson based this sketch of wagons and the transcontinental telegraph line near South Pass, with the Oregon Buttes in the distance

*****

Enjoy my latest historical romance novel!

In 1875, a blizzard wrecked the train Star Bird's family was riding.  She was sent from Minneapolis to Laramie, Wyoming. Unfortunately, her orphanage had overlooked the Great Lakota War that was raging. It peaked in 1876 just as she was fired from her first job.

In Minnesota, a Lakota woman wasn't considered dangerous, like she soon was, in Laramie...

Read about Star and Purcell, the settler who loves her! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BT5124ZN

Forts Along the California and Oregon Trails by Zina Abbott

The following is from my Author Notes in Pearl, my most recent romance, which is a wagon train story set in 1858. Entire books have been written about each of these places mentioned, so this is a very brief summary:

         Pioneers on the Oregon and California Trails—unless individual trains in which they traveled took a cutoff—passed by four major trading forts.

Fort Kearney

          Fort Kearney was a military installation established in 1848 to protect travelers on the Great Platte River Road. It was located about one-sixth of the way to either Oregon or California. Wagon trains moving west were able to resupply, trade trail-weary livestock for fresh, and letters could be sent back to the United States.

Fort Laramie

         Fort Laramie began in 1834 as a fur trading post. It was bought by the U.S. Army in 1849. As pioneer traffic to the west increased, it provided security, a trading post for supplies, and a place for repairs. It was the major stop between Fort Kearney and Fort Bridger.

 Fort Bridger 1840s

         Fort Bridger began as a trading post. It was on the trail to Salt Lake City, plus wagon trains bound for Oregon and California often made the relatively small detour to reach the fort for supplies and repairs. It was bought by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1855, although the sales documents and powers of attorney involved were challenged by Jim Bridger. With the belief that the coming U.S. Army had been sent to exterminate the church and its people, the same church burned and abandoned the fort in 1857. 

 

Fort Bridger 1858

    Fort Bridger was taken over by the U.S. Army. By 1858, construction on the fort had begun and a sutler’s store run by William A. Carter was established. He ran it until his death in 1881, at which time his wife, Elizabeth, took over supplying both military men stationed at the fort and travelers alike. The sutler also ran the post office.

 

Fort Hall

         On the banks of the Snake River, Fort Hall was a trading post built in 1834 by Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth. In 1858, it was located in Oregon Territory. In February 1859, when Oregon became a state, it was part of Washington Territory. Initially, Fort Hall’s owners did not wish to be a supplier for travelers bound for Oregon or California, but it was soon forced into that role as it became a regular stop on both trails. It became one of the most important stopping places along the trails.

 

 

Pearl, Book 16 in the Prairie Roses Collection, is set in 1858 and follows both the Oregon and California Trails.It is currently for sale as an ebook and at no additional cost with a Kindle Unlimited subscription. It will shortly be available in print.

To find the link to the book description and purchase options, please CLICK HERE.

 

FORT KEARNEY By Cheri Kay Clifton

 Writing about the historical Old West is in my blood!  Why? Because I was born near the Oregon Trail in Kearney, Nebraska.

As a young girl, I became interested in the history of nearby Fort Kearny after which my hometown was named and equally fascinated to read about the soldiers, pioneers, and Native Americans who helped create the history of America's growth westward.

Fort Kearny was founded in 1848 along the Platte River and named after then Colonel and later General Stephen W. Kearny.  As an interesting side note, the "e" was added to Kearny by postmen who consistently misspelled the town's name.  Also one should not confuse Fort Kearny with the historic Fort Phil Kearny located in Wyoming and named after Kearny's nephew, Maj. Gen. Philip Kearny.

 

General Stephen W. Kearny

 Despite its lack of fortifications, Ft. Kearny served as a way station, sentinel post, supply depot and message center for 49ers bound for California and emigrants traveling to California, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest.  Numbering in the hundreds of thousands, those brave pioneers crossed the continent searching for economic opportunity, and who associated land ownership and farming with freedom. 

  

Throughout most of its 23-year history, the outpost consisted mostly of wooden buildings surrounding a central parade ground without fortified walls.  Throughout the decades of its use until the completion of the transcontinental railroad, the buildings became slightly more permanent, changing from adobe and sod structures to the wooden frame buildings. 

 

   As the first U.S. Army post on the Oregon Trail, it grew rapidly into an important trail stop. The fort accumulated large stores of goods for travelers, with the directive of selling them at beneficial cost to the emigrants. The commander of the fort was authorized to sell goods at cost to emigrants, and in cases of hardship, to give goods to them for free.  In 1850, the fort acquired regular once-a-month mail service with the arrival of a stagecoach route between Independence, Missouri and Salt Lake City.  It was the first regular mail service established along the trail. By the 1860's the fort became a significant freighting station and home station of the Pony Express.

 Although it was in the heart of lands inhabited by Native Americans, and was near the center of hostile action in the 1860's, no direct attack was ever made on the fort.  However, in the summer of 1864, the irritation of the Native Americans at the encroachment by white settlers culminated in violent attacks on wagon trains along the Platte and the Little Blue River.  During this time, soldiers from Fort Kearny began escorting wagon trains and the fort became a center for refugees fleeing from attacks.

The construction of the Union Pacific Railroad across Nebraska starting in 1867 largely marked the end of the need for a fort to protect and supply wagon train emigrants. Following the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, the U.S. Army issued an order for abandonment of the post in May, 1871.

Fort Kearny State Historical Park

In 1960, Nebraska designated the land where the outpost once stood as Fort Kearny State Historical Park.  Archeological exploration has located the building sites that are now marked with interpretive signs. Replicas of the palisade and blacksmith shop were built. An interpretive center presents audio-visual programs and museum displays. The park's 40 acres also acts as a recreational area, providing hiking trails, camping, picnicking and boating.

 Fort Kearny played a vital role in the settlement of the American West. I feel fortunate to have spent part of my childhood living nearby and thus, developing a love for our western heritage and more importantly a love of writing about it.

 The fort's history was the inspiration for writing Book 1 of the Wheels of Destiny Trilogy, Trail To Destiny, which takes place along the Oregon Trail.

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On the Move

 In today’s jet-setting world, we tend to forget how laborious and time-consuming travel used to be. Sure, we occasionally think of the Oregon Trail and the people who traversed the western United States along its continuous pathway. We even like to read stories with characters that are struggling to cross those endless plains and mighty mountains. However, I’ve noticed a trend in my own writing, and a connecting one in some of my readers’ minds when they read my historical western romances. You see, in my historical western romances, my characters are on the move. Since my stories take place long after the prime era of the Oregon Trail migration, railway travel is the mode my characters most often use. And, well, they use it a lot. How exactly they manage to pay the expensive travel fare is something I usually leave up to the reader's imagination.

 

 

In my first Pinkerton Matchmaker book, An Agent for Elizabeth, however, I had 18-year-old Elizabeth purchase a train ticket for $122 to travel from Kansas City to Denver. I, along with a few of the authors in the series, made an educated guess based on a travel log that one of the authors was able to pull up online. Turns out that we were pretty close! Other sources I have since run across mention that train fare cost 2-3 cents per mile, and in 1870, a trip from New York to San Francisco cost around $136 if traveling first-class in a Pullman car. That was quite a lot of cash for the average person to hand over back then. It was Elizabeth's stepmother who provided her with the funds to make this trip. What neither of them knew was that Elizabeth wasn’t just going to meet her beau—who didn’t know he was her beau—she would need to become a Pinkerton agent in order to snag his interest!

 

As for my heroine, Susannah Eversoll, in my Brides of Hope Hollow story, Hope Springs Eternal, she migrated from Missouri, where she grew up, to Dakota Territory, when her first husband took a job there, and then to Piedmont, Wyoming. I imagine, as the general notion goes, most regular folks in those days didn’t travel more than five to ten miles beyond their childhood homes is true. However, as Laura Ingalls Wilder, along with other journals from people who lived back then have proven, there were some brave souls who did step into the great unknown and make long treks for the purpose of bettering their lives. My own ancestors were some of these folks. I’m not sure how desirous they were for seeking riches or seeing parts of the country they hadn’t seen before, but they were Mormons who were being driven out of their homes and needed a place of refuge. They traveled right alongside the folks who were going to Oregon or to the California gold fields, only they stayed on one side of the Platte River while the rest of the travelers stayed on their side, mainly for protection against anyone who might hold strong sentiments against them and therefore cause more trouble than they’d already faced back East.

 

Back to Susannah, though. She and her husband wouldn’t have traveled by rail up to Dakota Territory from Missouri. This was during the time of the Civil War. They left that state because of the conflicts that were happening (and unbeknownst to Susannah, her husband was deeply involved in them). Maps from that era show there were no rail lines heading up that way. It would have been a long and arduous journey, especially since their daughter, Melissa, was so young at the time.

 

Courtesy of Library of Congress

 

One reason that I chose to place Susannah and her first husband in Dakota Territory, even though it didn’t have a huge bearing on the story, was that in 2019, my family and I traveled up from Arizona to Wyoming, stopping at Independence Rock. From there, we went into Deadwood, South Dakota, and then down to western Nebraska, visiting a few historic places there, and home through Colorado and New Mexico. So it was one big loop for us—and an incredibly enlightening trip for me. In South Dakota, I fell in love with the beautiful, fragrant blossoms there. I never imagined the prairie land looking and smelling so vibrant and fresh. I was amazed! Perhaps someday I’ll write a book that fully takes place there. Here are a few pictures from that trip. It’s definitely time to take another one!

 

 

As you can also see from the map above, there were no rail lines going straight into southern Oregon from Wyoming and Idaho in the 1880s, where the Brides of Hope Hollow series takes place, so my brides have to travel through California and then up that way. Ariana, the schoolteacher in my last BofHH story, On the Wings of Hope, did some major traveling before finally settling in Hope Hollow. Her reason? She was being chased by a strange man. She started teaching in western Nebraska and then made her way to Rawlins, Wyomings, then to Carson City, Nevada, and a fictional town in northern California. And still the man followed her! I don’t know about you, but I would keep on the move if I were a lone woman in 1882 and a man whom I didn’t know kept showing up in the places I moved to!

 

Courtesy of Union Pacific website

 

Incidentally, Ariana's story doesn't begin in Nebraska. She was a rider on an orphan train. As you can see from this map, at the time Ariana rode the rails to her new home, the Union Pacific Railroad only went a little ways past Omaha, and that's where she was adopted into a not-so-loving family.

 

 So while the stories of these women traveling such far distances, and many times on their own, might seem farfetched, there were actually several brave females who did this in real life (check out the real life story of Charley Parkhurst here). And I want to pay homage to them. I don’t know that I would have had the fortitude to do such a thing. Perhaps some of them were escaping a bad situation at home. Perhaps they felt there were no opportunities for them. I especially like the fact that they put their trust in God to bring them to a place of prosperity. I am of the mindset that we shouldn’t settle for less than happiness. Yes, the old adage to bloom where you’re planted is a good one. But we can also plant ourselves where the soil is more fertile.

 

I hope these women and others in your life inspire you to take a leap of faith into the unknown. No matter what, we must keep plowing ahead until we reach our goals. 

 

One step at a time.

 

 

To learn more about Julia’s books, visit her Amazon page.

EZRA MEEKER - PIONEER AND PROMOTER OF THE OREGON TRAIL By Cheri Kay Clifton

Before I tell you about Ezra Meeker (1830-1928), I would like to explain why I found his biography so interesting.

I was born in Kearney, Nebraska, located near the historic Oregon Trail. My hometown was named after Fort Kearny (spelled without the “e”), the first Army post located on the Oregon Trail that offered the emigrants a safe resting area and a chance to resupply, obtain fresh stock and send letters back to the States.

From the time I was a young girl, I was fascinated by the history of the pioneers who followed the Trail traveling in their Conestoga wagons over 2000 miles across the rugged western frontier. My continued passion for those pioneers, soldiers and Native Americans who helped create the history of America’s growth westward led me to write Book 1 of my Trails of Destiny Trilogy, entitled Trail to Destiny.

In 1852, Ohio-born farmer, Ezra Meeker, along with his young wife and infant child set out on for the Oregon Territory, where land could be claimed and settled on. Traveling by ox-drawn wagon, they endured countless hardships along the Oregon Trail on their journey, but after nearly six months, they survived their trek across the continent. After living in the Puget Sound region, they finally settled in what is now Puyallup (which he founded) in 1862.

Throughout his life, Meeker had many successes and yes, failures. He had been an adventurer, farmer, surveyor, longshoreman, merchant, community leader, civic builder, the richest man in the state by growing, believe it or not, hops for the beer industry, miner and writer. He'd made millions and he'd lost millions.

But in his 70’s, he still had dreams. He believed the Oregon Trail, and the sacrifice of those who had died along it, were being forgotten. Amid considerable publicity as one of the last survivors of the pioneers who had blazed the Trail west, between 1906 and 1908, Ezra retraced his 1852 journey. The Trail in some places had all but disappeared, replaced by farms and towns. He searched out where he had traveled and sought to have historical markers erected. 

Remnants of the wagon ruts can still be seen.

I was privileged to have seen and touched this memorial

while researching the Trail.

He took his ox team and wagon across the nation to publicize his cause, stopping in front of the White House where he met President Theodore Roosevelt. He traveled the Trail again several times in the final two decades of his life. In 1910, he and his oxen participated in the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California. In the succeeding years, he traveled the Trail route by ox-driven wagon, a Pathfinder automobile, and at age 93, in 1924, by airplane attempting to further his cause for federal recognition and funding to memorize the Oregon Trail. Thus, he became the only know pioneer to have crossed the prairie on the Oregon Trail ox-drawn wagon, automobile … and airplane!

Meeker died short of his 98^th birthday on December 23, 1928, in Seattle, and was taken home to Puyallup for burial beside his wife, Eliza Jane, who had died during 1909, in Woodbine Cemetery.

Meeker’s work has continued through the activities of such groups as the Oregon-California Trails Association. OCTA is the pre-eminent guardian and promoter of the inspirational story of the 19^th century westward migration, which is unique in world history. The non-profit organization is dedicated to the preservation and protection of the overland emigrant trails, namely the three major historical trail routes to Santa Fe, Oregon and California.  

May all the trails my readers travel be both safe and happy!