The reader may think of the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains as a precipitous defile through narrow canyons and deep gorges, but nothing is farther from the fact than such imagined conditions. One can drive through this pass for several miles without realizing he has passed the dividing line between the waters of the Pacific on the one side and of the Gulf of Mexico on the other, while traveling over a broad, open, undulating prairie the approach is by easy grades and the descent (going east) scarcely noticeable.
Certainly, if my memory is worth anything, in 1852 some of our party left the road but a short distance to find banks of drifted snow in low places in July, but none was in sight on the level of the road as we came along in June of 1906. This was one of the landmarks that looked familiar, as all who were toiling west looked upon this spot as the turning point in their journey, and that they had left the worst of the trip behind them, poor, innocent souls as we were, not realizing that our mountain climbing in the way of rough roads only began a long way out west of the summit of the Rockies.
SWEETWATER.
The sight of Sweetwater River, twenty miles out from the pass, revived many pleasant memories and some that were sad. I could remember the sparkling, clear water, the green skirt of undergrowth along the banks and the restful camps as we trudged along up the streams so many years ago. And now I see the same channel, the same hills, and apparently the same waters swiftly passing; but where are the campfires; where the herd of gaunt cattle; where the sound of the din of bells; the hallowing for lost children; the cursing of irate ox drivers; the pleading for mercy from some humane dame for the half-famished dumb brute; the harsh sounds from some violin in camp; the merry shouts of children; or the little groups off on the hillside to bury the dead? All gone. An oppressive silence prevailed as we drove down to the river and pitched our camp within a few feet of the bank where we could hear the rippling waters passing and see the fish leaping in the eddies. We had our choice of a camping place just by the skirt of refreshing green brush with an opening to give full view of the river. Not so in '52 with hundreds of camps ahead of you. One must take what he could get, and that in many cases would be far back from the water and removed from other conveniences.
The sight and smell of the carrion so common in camping places in our first trip was gone; no bleached bones even showed where the exhausted dumb brute had died; the graves of the dead emigrants had all been leveled by the hoofs of stock and the lapse of time. "What a mighty change!" I exclaimed. We had been following the old Trail for nearly 150 miles on the west slope of the mountains with scarce a vestige of civilization. Out of sight and hearing of railroads, telegraphs, or telephones and nearly a hundred miles without a postoffice. It is a misnomer to call it a "slope." It is nearly as high an altitude a hundred miles west of the summit as the summit itself. The country remains as it was fifty-four years before. The Trail is there to be seen miles and miles ahead, worn bare and deep, with but one narrow track where there used to be a dozen, and with the beaten path so solid that vegetation has not yet recovered from the scourge of passing hoofs and tires of wagons years ago.
As in 1852 when the summit was passed, I felt that my task was much more than half done, though the distance was scarcely compassed. I felt we were entitled to a rest even though it was a solitude, and so our preparations were made for two days' rest if not recreation. The two days passed and we saw but three persons. We traveled a week on this stretch, to encounter five persons only, and to see but one wagon, but our guide to point the way was at hand all the time—a pioneer way a hundred feet wide and in places ten feet deep, we could not mistake. Our way from this Camp 81 on Sweetwater led us from the river and over hills for fifty miles before we were back to the river again. Not so my Trail of '52, for then we followed the river closer and crossed it several times, while part of the people went over the hills and made the second trail. It was on this last stretch we set our 1,000-mile post as we reached the summit of a very long hill, eighteen miles west of where we again encountered the river, saw a telegraph line, and a road where more than one wagon a week passed as like that we had been following so long.
SPLIT ROCK.
I quote from my journal:
"Camp No. 85, June 30.—Odometer 1,044. About ten o'clock encountered a large number of big flies that ran the cattle nearly wild. We fought them off as best we could. I stood on the wagon tongue for miles so I could reach them with the whip-stock. The cattle were so excited, we did not stop at noon, finding water on the way, but drove on through by two-thirty and camped at a farmhouse, the Split Rock postoffice, the first we had found since leaving Pacific Springs, the other side of the summit of South Pass and eighty-five miles distant."
"Split Rock" postoffice derives its name from a rift in the mountain a thousand feet or more high, as though a part of the range had been bodily moved a rod or so, leaving this perpendicular chasm through the range, which was narrow.