Carylin' on the Oregon / California Trail - Day Six

Caryling on the Oregon Trail

DAY 6

Though we were gone many more days, this is the last day I'll be sharing here on our incredible, awesome research journey on the Oregon / California Trail. On this day we broke off from the Oregon Trail and went south on the California Trail for the rest of our trip.

Near Fort Hall was where the wagon trains had a parting of the ways, some going north if  Oregon was their destination or south for the wagons going on to California.

We woke up in Pocatello, Idaho, where the actual Fort Hall is now on the Shoshone-Bannock Indian Reservation about thirty miles away and is inaccessible general public without special permits.

But a replica was built in the city in the in 1960s. We visited the public museum there. Once we left, we got to Nevada very quickly.

I finally got to see the actual tracks of the wagons near Wells, Nevada. There'd been lots of places where you could see them before, but since we took our trip in December, our choices were more limited.

We had to drive a ways out of Wells, Nevada, but what a thrilling sight! The double tracks worn into the packed earth almost two hundred years ago by wagon trains passing through.

It looks like an old farm road you might see here in Red River County where I live in a Texas farming community---well, minus the mountains on the horizon. You can see the "California Trail" marker bottom center to verify this is the real deal.

This was one of my favorite places of all the sights we’d seen!

We followed the Snake River, just as the wagon trains did. A part of the actual trail is beneath the highway we rode on.

Soon we got to Massacre Rock, so-called because of the narrow passage between the rocks, only wide enough for one wagon at a time.

The gap was called the Devil’s Gate or Gate of Death. It’s a State Park now.

A little farther on the highway, we stopped at Register Rock.

This place was a wonderful place for the wagons to stop and spend a day or two of rest as it proved to be a prime camping area.


Sojourners carved their names and dates on rocks in this park as so many had on Independence Rock, but here you could get up close.

Though the biggest rocks are behind a chain-link fence and covered with a tabernacle type roof to preserve it, protecting it from modern-day people who would carve their names.

I wondered if those who carved their names so long ago had thought that an author doing research for a book about traveling on the Oregon / California Trail might come by one day and take a photo of their name almost two centuries after they’d done the deed.

With her phone, no less!

By now the settlers had traveled about twelve hundred miles of their two thousand mile journey and the hardest part still lay ahead of them.

I would have hated knowing I couldn’t change my mind and go back where I had come from.
The only option was to go forward.

This is where they entered the ‘Great Basin’, following the Humbolt River that eventually just disappears into the ground. Its water turned very alkaline.

Then they faced the Forty-Mile Desert. The extreme heat was tough on the people but especially on the oxen as they’ve been working hard for many months.

To avoid it, they rested during the day and only traveled at night, pushing to get across the waterless desert in as little time as possible.

To lighten the load, after carrying their possessions all that way, they started emptying the wagons, leaving furniture and precious items behind on the trail along the way.

They thought that was surely the worst of it.

But the weary travelers got through that dreadful place, the Sierra Nevada Mountains stood in front of them.

The Shoshone tribe helped the settlers find water and food once across the desert.

As we drove, I couldn’t imagine how the wagons would have climbed those mountains.

At one of the hardest, highest spots, they took the wheels off the wagons and used great logs to roll the wagons up, oxen pulling from the top, men pushing from below, until each wagon got over the steep climb.

In my Prairie Roses Collection Collection contribution titled REMI! This is the place where they celebrate, looking down over the beautiful California valley on the west side of the mountain.

My characters, Asher and Remi plan on settling in the Napa Valley. They carried grape stock to plant a vineyard there. This is a story you won’t want to miss!

And you meet Remi toward the end of my Lockets and Lace Collection (all Sweet Americana Sweetheart bloggers) title UNIQUELY COMMON.  So read UNIQUELY COMMON first, then REMI! And enjoy! 

Bio: Award-winning Author Caryl McAdoo prays her story brings God glory! And her best-selling novels are blessed with a lion’s share of 5-Star ratings! With forty-three-and-counting titles, she loves writing as well as singing the new songs the Lord gives her—listen to a few at YouTube. She and husband Ron share four children and eighteen grandsugars. The McAdoos live in the woods south of Clarksville, seat of Red River County, in far Northeast Texas, waiting expectantly for God to open the next door. 

Contact Caryl: Amazon  Website  Facebook  BookBub  Newsletter  Influencers Group
   

 

Carylin' on the Oregon Trail - Day Five

After such a grand Day Four and Independence Rock, we awoke in Rock Springs on Thursday, December 20th, had an awesome breakfast and hit the road . . . or the Oregon Trail. The landscape turned from rocks everywhere to a few trees here and there. In the 1850s when wagon trains traveled our direction, fires for cooking were important.

More trees meant more wood to gather for cook fires.

Fort Bridger was our first stop that morning in Unita County, the southern-western-most corner in Wyoming.

I introduced Jim Bridger in the last installment as the guide for the U.S. Army when they were searching for the best way through the territory for the wagon trains.

He is honored there with a full statue.

Mister Bridger established a trading post on the Black Fork of the Green River in 1842, and the Army, a military post in 1858 during the Utah War, also known as the Utah Expedition, Buchanan's Blunder, the Utah Campaign, ot the Mormon War or Rebellion.

It basically was a non-bloody confrontation of the soldiers President Buchanan sent to Utah to negotiate and the Mormons who suspected they were to be slaughtered, having been persecuted before in other areas.

It became a vital re-supply point for the settlers heading west. Fort Bridger served the area until 1890 when it closed.

At that time William Clayton was named sutler, a civilian merchant who sold provisions. 

About twenty minutes (for us----more like two days for the settlers) out of Ft. Bridger, the landscape changed again to abundant scrubby evergreens that would have been used for fuel to save the gathered wood.

From there, we traveled north toward Ft. Hall.

It was a boring stretch for sightseeing. On the way though, we stopped in Montiplier, Idaho where there's a wonderful Oregon/California Trail museum.

Bear Lake there served as a resting place for the wagon train sojourners with lush meadows and water aplenty.

No doubt they had their fill of fish for supper, for which I'm sure they were profoundly grateful.

It is estimated that conservatively, twenty thousand souls died on the Oregon/California Trail; illness was the most common cause, accidents next. Smallpox, influenza, measles, mumps, tuberculosis claimed many lives, but cholera was the worst.

Being run over by a wagon was the number one cause of accidental deaths with accidental gunshot wounds coming in second. The deceased were often buried directly under the trail so the dirt would be hard packed, protecting the body from scavengers.

Imagine a wife losing her husband or worse, losing a child on the trail.

In UNIQUELY COMMON and REMI, the two books released in April and May, they had to quarantine the wagons once for measles, and two minor characters died from them. Another man was killed in an accident. It proved a hard, merciless journey.

The two titles have different heroes and heroines, but the same group of folks, you'll enjoy spending more time with! Each is a stand-alone, but UNIQUELY COMMON, a Lockets and Lace Collection story, could be read first to keep the stories in order. I hope you can tell how much the trip we made on the Oregon / California Trail enriches Remi's story.

BLESSINGS!

Carylin' on the Oregon Trail - Day One, Saint Joseph, Missouri

It was a Wednesday, December 12th, and my husband asked me, “You want to go drive the Oregon Trail?”
I responded, “Sure. When?”
“Thought we’d leave Sunday.”

And so we did! Our only itinerary being we’d start at Saint Joseph in Missouri. That’s where the Bavarian Jewelry Shop is where all our “Lockets and Lace Collection” characters get their lockets, the commonality of the Sweet Americana Sweethearts’ collection stories. I messaged our Lockets and Lace organizer, Zina Abbott for the address so I could stop in.

The morning we left, God gave us a magnificent sunrise! The shadow building is our barn at The Peaceable where we live back in the woods south of Clarksville, Texas.


So Day One—Sunday, December 16—was a long drive, just over six hundred miles to get us from Clarksville to St. Jo. We left about 7:30 a.m. then arrived around 6 p.m., making several stretch stops including lunch and gasoline. We woke up fresh on Monday morning in Saint Joseph, Missouri.

We both thoroughly enjoyed the city that celebrates its historical relevance—the town where so many of the “Trails” converged to ferry across the Missouri River! Pony Express, too, though that isn't my story here. Literally, thousands of westward-bound sojourners would descend into the most western area of the then United States, camping all around with their families, all their possessions packed into covered wagons, and their oxen and mules to care for.

They’d arrive in the Spring and would wait there, stocking their wagons with tools and foodstuffs, finding a captain or wagon master to lead them, and join a ‘wagon train’.

The captain might have ten to fifty wagons total, and he’d charge by the person, upwards to ten dollars each—half a month’s wages. A family of four would be forty dollars, two month’s wages. He’d have a list of rules and required supplies.



The best ones had successfully made the journey in prior years and might charge more. It usually took a family’s life savings to go west and claim their piece of free land.

The wagon could run two-to-four hundred dollars, depending on new or used. The prairie schooners were the most suited, while the heavier, larger Conestoga wagons were more expensive and proved harder to pull.

Oxen—bulls castrated after reaching full growth—were cheaper and considered better than mules or horses for their strength and ability to survive on poorer grass and less water. Mules were more sure-footed and could go faster, but cost double. A thousand-mile trip or less might prefer mules, but for the long haul, oxen were best.

There were also provisions necessary to buy. Six hundred pounds combined of flour, meal, salt pork, lard, and coffee—sugar was a great luxury. For meat, they would hunt and fish on the trail. They needed tools to keep their wagons repaired, and cooking utensils, chains and rope, extra clothes, and firearms. And all that cost more the closer to Saint Jo they got.

Many, many trains would be waiting to leave, but each only made one trip each year, leaving in the Spring and doing everything in their power to arrive before the winter storms.

Then came the wait. They wouldn’t leave until the prairie grasses started growing tall and nutritious for the stock. We drove down Francis Street to the Missouri River and saw the place where the bank on the far side had been shaped to handle the ferry’s offloading. The barge might hold five wagons at a time.

When the grasses grew, the thousands of pioneers would line up to get across and choke the streets of Saint Joseph for a couple of months until the last ones to leave could be ferried across. They might wait three weeks in the line for the ferry, and it would work from dawn to dusk to move thousands of wagons and families and dreams across the river.

When the emigrants landed on the far bank, they were no longer in the United States or under its protection. They would regroup with their chosen captains, and their journeys would begin at a pace of twelve to fifteen miles average a day.

Their first destination, Fort Kearny, Nebraska.

Caryl's January release: TEXAS MY TEXAS, book two in the new Cross Timbers Romance Family Saga. Available now for Pre-order! Launch date January 12th!

Watch for the Stories coming in 2019 to benefit from this awesome journey:
APRIL release: Lockets and Lace Collection, book three UNIQUELY COMMON
MAY release: Prairie Roses Collection, book one REMI
JULY release: Gold Diggers Collection, book one A THOUSAND SUNSETS



BIO:  Award-winning Author Caryl McAdoo prays her story brings God glory which is what she lives to do. Her best-selling novels entertain readers around the world who shower them with 5-Star ratings! With forty-and-counting titles, she loves writing as well as singing the new songs the Lord gives her—listen to a few at YouTube. She celebrated fifty years of marriage to Ron in June 2018 and shares four children and eighteen grandsugars with him. The McAdoos live in the woods south of Clarksville, seat of Red River County, in far Northeast Texas, waiting expectantly for God to open the next door.

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