Trifter

Hopes of carving a future from an unknown frontier changed the shape of America as nearly half a million pioneers streamed west in the mid-19th century. When the dust cleared, the United States had achieved continental breadth and power. Modern wagoneers, left, retrace the trail in Nebraska to get a feel for the hardships of the grueling trip.

Image via Wikipedia Strain of the trail shows in the faces of pioneers pausing from the routine of travel. A bone-wearying pace of 15 miles a day, was required to cross the last mountains before autumn snows, prompting a diarist’s lament, ”I am getting oh extremely tired of the journey.” Archivists and historians know little about this photograph. Hard miles had taken a toll of pioneers, wagons, and animals by the time they reached western Wyoming’s arid lands and they still had a long way to go. Plume Rocks, above, near South Pass, forty-niner J. Goldsborough Bruff Counted 46 dead oxen. . . . it is difficult to find a camping ground destitute of carcases.

Jumping-off the great adventure, Westport Landing (above) now part of Kansas City and other Missouri River towns were bustling centers for outfitting wagon trains. Pioneers from the East often arrived by riverboat in early April, then camped on the outskirts while waiting for grasses to grow on the plains to feed their animals. The frenzy of activity moved one observer to write, ”it was a great life . . . it was life as at a fair.” Such exuberance soon faded. Some 60 shakedown miles west lay Lawrence, Kansas (right), founded in 1854, here mushrooming in the 1860s. Click the link for The Itch to Move West Part Two.