Is That a Wagon in My Back Yard ?

My wife and I have had several discussions as to whether the Oregon or Mormon Trails passed through our back yard. Why, because we live only a quarter of a mile from the North Platte River.

Looking back at the North Platte River  from Deep Ruts Hill

The trails were not a path but an area of many paths. In some places in Wyoming, the trails are many miles wide from north to south. All of the wagons west did not follow in the ruts of others. Here in Guernsey, Wyoming there are ruts within a stone’s throw of the trail and some several miles away.

In  places, wagons cut the soft rock

Where the view of the river was lost often a deer or buffalo trial was followed. These trails, early on known as trapper trails, would eventually become the famous trails west. Wilson Price Hunt’s route west to Astoria became the approximate course of the Oregon Trail. But it was Robert Stuart’s path along the North Platte River that perfected the trail.

Flower lined game trail

The Oregon and Mormon trails became the greatest highways of American history expanding America to the Pacific Ocean. The Indians called it the Great Medicine Road of the whites. Yes, there were settlers in Oregon before the trail and thousands of people in California. But now there was a way for the common man to go west. And for the first time the Indian lands of the west became fair game for new settlement.