"Locally, it is difficult to get accurate information. All agree there is no vestige of the old Traders' Camp or the first United States fort left, but disagree as to its location. The new fort (not a fort, but an encampment) covers a space of thirty or forty acres with all sorts of buildings and ruins, from the old barracks, three hundred feet long, in good preservation and occupied by the present owner, Joseph Wild, as a store, postoffice, saloon, hotel and family residence, to the old guard house with its grim iron door and twenty-inch concrete walls. One frame building, two stories, we are told, was transported by ox team from Kansas City at a cost of $100 per ton freight. There seems to be no plan either in the arrangement of the buildings or of the buildings themselves. I noticed one building, part stone, part concrete, part adobe, and part burnt brick. The concrete walls of one building measured twenty-two inches thick and there is evidence of the use of lime with a lavish hand, and I think all of them are alike massive.
"The location of the barracks is in Sec. 28, T. 26 N., R. 64 W. of 6th P. M., United States survey."
SCOTT'S BLUFF.
July 20th, odometer 1,308¼ miles.—We drove out from the town of Scott's Bluff to the left bank of the North Platte, less than a mile from the town, to a point nearly opposite that noted landmark, Scott's Bluff, on the right bank, looming up near eight hundred feet above the river and adjoining green fields, and photographed the bluffs and section of the river.
Probably all emigrants of early days remember Scott's Bluff, which could be seen for so long a distance, and yet apparently so near for days and days, till it finally sank out of sight as we passed on, and new objects came into view. As with Tortoise Rock, the formation is sand and clay cemented, yet soft enough to cut easily, and is constantly changing in smaller details.
We certainly saw Scott's Bluff while near the junction of the two rivers, near a hundred miles distant, in that illusive phenomenon, the mirage, as plainly as when within a few miles of it.
Speaking of this deceptive manifestation of one natural law, I am led to wonder why, on the trip of 1906, I have seen nothing of those sheets of water so real as to be almost within our grasp, yet never reached, those hills and valleys we never traversed, beautiful pictures on the horizon and sometimes above, while traversing the valley in 1852—all gone, perhaps to be seen no more, as climatic changes come to destroy the conditions that caused them. Perhaps this may in part be caused by the added humidity of the atmosphere, or it may be also in part because of the numerous groves of timber that now adorn the landscape. Whatever the cause, the fact remains that in the year 1852 the mirage was of common occurrence and now, if seen at all, is rare.
The origin of the name of Scott's Bluff is not definitely known, but as tradition runs "a trader named Scott, while returning to the States, was robbed and stripped by the Indians. He crawled to these bluffs and there famished and his bones were afterwards found and buried," these quoted words having been written by a passing emigrant on the spot, June 11, 1852.
Another version of his fate is that Scott fell sick and was abandoned by his traveling companions, and after having crawled near forty miles finally died near the "Bluffs" ever after bearing his name. This occurred prior to 1830.