Across the Continent by the Lincoln Highway

by Effie Price Gladding

We drove from Point of Rocks to Wamsutter, where we had luncheon. The road from Point of Rocks to Wamsutter is very rough and we were tormented by the plague of these roads of the plains; namely, gutters made across the roadway by running water in time of freshets. One has to be continually on guard for these runnels. Sometimes they are very deep. They give the machine a frightful jar and if one comes upon them suddenly they are likely to break an axle. One must possess one's self in patience and drive at a pace that will enable him to slow down quickly in coming on them. Chuck holes and these gutters across the road are the two chief difficulties of travel across the plains. However, many a backcountry road of the Eastern States is just as uncomfortable for motor travelers.

On our way to Wamsutter we passed a fellow traveler, a gentleman from New York with his family. His son drove their car, a Pope Hartford, and they were seventeen days out from New York. They had ten days more in which to reach San Francisco if they were to help their friends win the wagers which had been made on the time of their trip across country. We assured them that they would be able to reach San Francisco in ten days, barring serious accidents, if only they would rise early and drive late, making ten hours a day.

Just outside of Point of Rocks we had come upon another and a humbler caravan. A man and his wife were encamped in a canvas-covered moving-wagon by the roadside, having found a patch of grass that promised forage for the horses. We stopped to talk with them and learned that they lived near Pueblo, Colorado. Having planted their crop they had come away on a prospecting tour into northern Wyoming to look up better farming country. They were now returning, traveling by day and camping by the roadside at night. They had had what is called mountain fever, due they thought to the bites of mosquitoes.

They liked the Wyoming country they had seen, but deplored the heavy drinking. They told us of one man who had said that he did not mean to go into town on the Fourth of July. Everybody got drunk, said he, and he did not want to put himself in the way of temptation. They spoke of a lovely farming country in the midst of which was a little town where saloons were open all night and all day Sunday. They told us of one saloon keeper who had been hauling barrels of whiskey for days in preparation for his business of July 4th. He openly boasted that he meant to take in $3,000. on that day.

As we drive along, we constantly see the remains of former camps by the roadside. Old tin teakettles, pieces of worn-out campstools, piles of tin cans; these are mute and inglorious monuments to the bivouacs of other days. These immense Plateau States are very dependent upon canned foods, and all along tin cans mark the trail. We have many evidences, too, that we are in a sheep and cattle country. We pass the dried up carcasses of sheep and the bones of cattle and of horses as they lie upon the desert near the road. Often the fleece of the sheep, dried and shrunken by wind and weather, sticks to the bones of the animal. It lies where it fell, only one of a vast herd, sick and dying, perhaps freezing in a blizzard. We asked one countryman what the sheep did in case of the fierce storms that sometimes sweep over the winter plains. "They just hump up and die," he replied. We saw many a shriveled carcass of some poor animal that had succumbed and fallen never to rise again. But so high are these plains and so dry is the atmosphere, that nature quickly shrivels these carcasses and they are not offensive as they would be in damp climates.

Out on the desert we waited for a long freight train to pass as it stood blocking the roadway. The train conductor came along and he and T. exchanged greetings. "It's good to see you," said the conductor; "you motor people are about the only signs of life we fellows see out here on the desert."

Coming into Wamsutter, and later coming toward Rawlins, we flushed numbers of grey-brown prairie chickens, almost as large as hens. They would fly up from the sage brush as the noise of our machine came near. There were some large flocks of young birds. Between Rawlins and Laramie we met late in the afternoon a large caravan of movers. They looked foreign and were evidently in search of new farms and homes. They were drinking, and watering their tired horses at a small station on the railway. There were plenty of little children in the caravan. One woman dandled a tiny baby. A little farther on we came to a second and smaller camp. These people were traveling from Kansas to Washington. "There is good land there still that can be taken up by homesteaders, fine fruit lands," said they. One man had seen the land and was acting as guide for the others. Their wagons were drawn by horses and burros. The children were sweet, cheerful little people, but the whole party looked somewhat underfed. I would have liked to give them all the luxury of a hot bath in a big tub to be followed by a substantial supper. They had their water with them, having hauled it from the last point where water was to be had. They deplored the fact that they had camped before knowing of the Union Pacific Station a little farther on. Water is a precious thing in the desert. We have passed two places where signs read that water could be had at the rate of five cents per beast and twenty-five cents a barrel. At the watering stations on the Union Pacific Railroad, the wells are the property of the Road. Before we came into Medicine Bow, we passed through a little mining town, high and bare on the summit of a ridge. Just outside the town was a bare little cemetery, the brown graves decorated with paper crosses and wreaths. An iron fence protected the cemetery, and outside its boundaries was an untidy litter of old wreaths and crosses which had been discarded and had been blown by the wind in tight heaps against the fence.

1. Road in Wyoming costing $50,000 per mile. 2. Characteristic Sign on Lincoln Highway.