Here at the Forks was a point of departure in the old days. If one chose to follow the South Fork of the Platte, he might bring up in the Bayou Salade, within reach of the Spanish settlements and the head of the Arkansas, as we may see in reading of La Lande and of Purcell and of Ashley, and of the later traders; or he might take the other arm and come out on the edge of the continental Divide much higher up to the north.
The Oregon trail followed the South Fork for a time, then swung over to the North Fork, at Ash Creek, five hundred and thirteen miles from Independence. It was six hundred and sixty-seven miles to Fort Laramie, which was the last post on the eastern side of the Rockies. Thence the trail struggled on up the Platte, keeping close as it might to the stream, till it reached the Ford of the Platte, well up toward the mountains, and seven hundred and ninety-four miles out from Independence—nearly the same distance from that point as was the city of Santa Fé on the lower trail.
Yet a little farther on and the trail forsook the Platte and swung across, eight hundred and seven miles out from the Missouri, to the valley of the Sweetwater, now an essential feature of the highway. The famous Independence Rock, eight hundred and thirty-eight miles from Independence, was one of the most noteworthy features along the trail. It marked the entrance into the Sweetwater district, and was a sort of register of the wilderness, holding the rudely carved names of many of the greatest Western venturers, as well as many of no consequence. The Sweetwater takes us below the foot of the Bighorns, through the Devil’s Gate, and leads us gently up to that remarkable crossing of the Rockies known as the South Pass, a spot of great associations. This is nine hundred and forty-seven miles from the Missouri River. Here all the west-bound voyagers felt that their journey to the Pacific was well-nigh completed, though as a matter of fact it was not yet half done. This Western geography, of which most of us know so little, was a tremendous thing in the times before the railways came.
Starting now down the Pacific side of the Great Divide, the traveler passed over a hundred and twenty-five miles of somewhat forbidding country, crossing the Green River before he came to Fort Bridger, the first resting point west of the Rockies, ten hundred and seventy miles from the Missouri. This was a delightful spot in every way, and the station was always welcomed by the travelers. The Bear River was eleven hundred and thirty-six miles from Independence, and to the Soda Springs, on the big bend of the Bear, was twelve hundred and six miles. Thence one crossed over the height of land between the Bear and the Port Neuf rivers, the latter being Columbia water; and, at a distance of twelve hundred and eighty-eight miles from Independence, reached the very important point of Fort Hall, the post established and abandoned by the Easterner, Nathaniel Wyeth. This was the first point at which the trail struck the Snake River, that great lower arm of the Columbia, which came dropping down from its source opposite the headwaters of the Missouri, as though especially to point out the way to travelers, just as the South Fork of the Platte led to the Spanish Southwest. There lay our pathways, waiting ready for us!
At the Raft River was another point of great interest; for here turned aside the arm of the transcontinental trail that led to California. This fork of the road was thirteen hundred and thirty-four miles from the Missouri.[[42]] Working as best it might from the Raft River, down the Great Snake valley, touching and crossing and paralleling several different streams, the trail ran until it reached the Grande Ronde valley, at the eastern edge of the difficult Blue Mountains, and seventeen hundred and thirty-six miles from the starting point. The railway to-day crosses the Blues where the old trail did. Then the route struck the Umatilla, and shortly thereafter the mighty Columbia, the “Oregon” of the poet, and a stream concerning which we were not always so placid as we are to-day. It was nineteen hundred and thirty-four miles to the Dalles, nineteen hundred and seventy-seven miles to the Cascades, two thousand and twenty miles to Fort Vancouver, and twenty-one hundred and thirty-four miles to the mouth of the Columbia; though the trail proper terminated at Fort Vancouver—the same post, as we shall see, for which the hero Jedediah Smith headed when he was in such dire distress, in the mountains of southwest Oregon.[[43]]
This was the way to the Pacific, the trail across the Rockies, the appointed path of the heroes that ventured forth into the unknown lands, as well as of the men that followed them safely in later days. It was but a continuation of the way to the Missouri, of the way across the Alleghanies, a part of the path of the strange appointed pilgrimage of the white race in America.
| [36] | Said to have been the first white man to cross the borders of what is now Wyoming. |
| [37] | Again our useful date of 1834. |
| [38] | Pray you yet again, remember this great American date of 1834, and you shall be quit of all others, all those telling of wars and politics. That was the year when the beaver trapping ceased to be profitable, when the trappers came in, when the wild West began to become the civilized West. This date, remembered philosophically, will prove of the utmost service in retaining a connected idea of the settlement of the West. It has bearings both upon the past and upon the future. It is a milestone marking the parting of the ways. |