In the tradition of the pioneers of this region, the more recent trails —the California, Salt Lake and Denver —are naturally more fully remembered. These followed the Oregon trail until it crossed the south fork at Brule. ...
At North Platte ... we had a most interesting interview with Washington M. Hinman, who was with the Mounted Rifle Regiment that went to Oregon in 1 849. ... A forty- mile bicycle ride from the South Platte valley at Sidney, Nebraska, brought us to Bridgeport, on the North Fork. Here, about six miles south of the river, stands the lone rock variously named Court House Rock, Stationary Tower and Ancient Ruins Bluff. Here again we were on the Oregon trail, and we traveled it continuously for a hundred miles. In many stretches the trail is the bed of the present traveled road, and through the hundred miles the road verges but little to the right or left of the original trail. It sweeps on northwestward along the bottom lands in a most impressive way. . . . Excepting where there has been special leveling for cultivation, a great trough, four feet deep and three or four rods wide, varying much, marks the course of overland travel during the 40's and 50's.
In this stretch of a hundred miles to Fort Laramie, the monotony of the weary trudge for the Oregon pioneers was no doubt much relieved by a series of interesting landmarks, Courthouse Rock, Chimney Rock, Castle and Steamboat Rocks and Scott's Bluff. . . . . . .
For miles upon miles this trip must to the pioneer have been a continuous wallow through deep sand under a fierce blazing sun. How any of the draft animals could have lived under such a strain is a mystery to one passing over this route now. The ranchers along the road are exceedingly hospitable, but the thing that arouses a feeling of injustice is that when the matter of the trail is brought up it is al ways spoken of as the "California trail" on the south side and the "Mormon trail" on the north side; never as the "Oregon trail", as which, in justice to the original makers of i t , i t should be known.
