Across the Continent by the Lincoln Highway

by Effie Price Gladding

We left Salt Lake City by driving through Parley's Canyon, a deep gash in the mountains parallel to Immigration Canyon. It is a favorite local drive to go out through Parley's Canyon and return to Salt Lake City through Immigration Canyon. The roadway is very narrow, as it shares the canyon floor with a railroad track and with a rushing stream, so one must drive carefully and keep a sharp lookout for trains. We met an itinerant Baptist missionary driving in his big caravan wagon into the country for a preaching trip. After leaving Parley's Canyon we came into open rolling country, and passed the substantial stone buildings of Stevens Ranch and Kimball Ranch. Then came Silver Creek Canyon, more open than Parley's Canyon and with a fair road. We had luncheon at the Coalville Hotel. I was attracted to the little town of Coalville because there were so many yards where old fashioned yellow rosebushes were laden with bloom. We drove on through Echo Canyon, whose red sandstone rocks, chiseled in many forms by wind and weather, have very fine coloring. At Castle Rock the whole formation is like that of a massive fortification. Six miles before we reached the town of Evanston, we crossed the State line and were in Wyoming. It is a pity that these State boundaries are indicated in many places by such shabby, indifferent wooden signs, looking as if they had been put up over night. Doubtless as the Lincoln Highway is improved there will be dignified boundary stones erected to mark the State lines.

Evanston is a pleasant little town 6300 feet high. Near Evanston is the Chapman Ranch, where many thousands of sheep are handled. We stopped in Evanston only a few minutes and then drove on through delightful desert country, open and rolling, grey-green and blue in its coloring. The Wyoming desert has a sharper and more vivid coloring than that of Nevada. The tableland is more rolling and the mountains are farther away. It is a wonderful sheep country, but the flocks are at present in the mountain ranges. Later, as the autumn comes on and cold falls upon their mountain pastures, the herders will bring them down to these plains over which we are passing.

Mr. Dudley of Alpine Ranch told us that should we visit the ranch in autumn we would find the whole valley covered with sheep. We heard much "sheep talk" in Nevada and Wyoming. We learned about the "shad scale" which the sheep eat, and about certain kinds of sage brush that are very nutritious. Mr. Dudley had pointed out to us a low-growing white plant, somewhat like the "dusty miller" of our childhood, that is extremely nutritious for cattle.

1. Prairie Schooners, Westward Bound. 2. Lincoln Highway Sign in the Desert. 3. Sheep in the Wyoming Desert.

Here and there on the desert we see fine bunches of beef cattle, feeding in little oases; green, damp stretches of country in the midst of an ocean of sage brush.

Now and then we pass a cattleman or a sheepman riding with that easy give of the body which is so graceful and so characteristic of Western horsemen. I know nothing like it, save the easy posture of those immortal youths who ride forever in the procession of the Elgin marbles in the British Museum. They have the same graceful easing of the body to the motion of the horse, and give the same impression of the harmony of horse and rider. Often we pass white, closely plastered log houses, just such as we saw in Nevada. We see white canopied wagons in the barnyards of almost every ranch house, just as in eastern Nevada. These people think nothing of traveling long distances in their prairie schooners with their supplies for roadside camping at night. They travel in their wagons to pay visits, to transact business and to buy supplies, and make long journeys in the summer months.

The smell of the sage brush, pungent and aromatic, is in my nostrils from day to day. I love it in its cleanness and spiciness, and shall be sorry when we have left the desert behind us. We have to be watchful for chuck holes made by the indefatigable gophers or prairie dogs. They often burrow in the ruts of the road. Our local guide leaflets, furnished us by garages along the route, are full of warnings about "chucks." Once we come upon a badger, beautifully marked, who has thrown up a large mound of dirt in burrowing his tunnel just in the middle of the road. He sees us coming and scuttles into his hole. We stop the car as we get near the hole and sit motionless. We wait patiently until finally his beautifully marked brown and white head is thrust cautiously out of his shelter. He is very curious to see what this huge black thing is, standing silent near his dwelling. Twice his head appears and his bright eyes peer out curiously. Then the click of the camera frightens him and he disappears to be seen no more.

Occasionally we pass motionless bodies of gophers and rabbits that have been struck by the flying wheel of some passing motor as they madly scrambled for safety.