Merrill J. Mattes

“ Casks of whisky, standard trade items, insured that the annual mountain carnival or rendezvous would see not only a rapid exchange of trade goods for beaver pelts, but also carousing and roistering on a scale suitable to compensate the trappers for their long lonely winter vigils. For 15 years Scotts Bluff would witness traders’ caravans, going mountainward in early summer, and returning in the autumn laden with their harvest of furs. ”

“ True, buffalo, antelope, and other game were hunted; but the wildlife was frightened by the endless, noisy, dusty column, and the hunters who galloped forth with romantic notions of a dashing buffalo hunt often came back empty-handed.
The ideal campsite would boast a good spring and a generous supply of timber for campfires and the repair of wagon gear. There were a few such campsites—Scotts Bluff with its springs and its ponderosa pine and cedars was one of the best—but these soon suffered from the pressure of converging crowds. ”

“ The ruthless hide-hunters were effective allies of the U. S. Army in ending resistance of the Plains Indian to the white man’s advance. The American bison, or buffalo, had been the staff of life and the major source of food, clothing, and shelter for the Indians. Once vast buffalo herds, blackening the landscape, crossed and recrossed the North Platte River. The many expeditions and the emigrants on the California Road killed the huge shaggy beast wholesale. ”

“ Oregon-California Trail Geography at Scotts Bluff
Today the hills of the North Platte Valley are not accounted among the scenic wonders of the United States; in Oregon Trail days, to emigrants who had been bored with the flatness and drabness of the Platte scenery, and who would be too exhausted later to appreciate the grandeur of the Rocky Mountains, the landmarks along the Platte had a captivating charm. Courthouse Rock and Chimney Rock were the appetizers ”

“ The year 1834 was a lively one along the trappers’ trail up the North Platte. This was the year that Robert Campbell and William Sublette halted their caravan at the mouth of Laramie’s Fork, some 60 miles above Scotts Bluff, to establish log-palisaded Fort William, the first of a succession of trading posts, and later a military post, which became the great way-station on the Oregon Trail, called Fort Laramie. A few days behind Sublette, Nathaniel Wyeth led a caravan upriver to establish rival Fort Hall in Idaho. ”

“ A typical wagon train with all its encumbrances, plus quicksand, mud, creek crossings, and other difficulties of terrain, could make but 15 to 20 miles per day over the level plains. In rough mountain country, progress was even slower; and there had to be frequent halts to rest worn-out, emaciated stock and to mend faulty gear. Thus it took perhaps 4 months for a train to reach a California gold camp. (Starting on May 15, the crest of the migration wave would pass Scotts Bluff about mid June.) ”

“ The wily Sioux have become peaceful citizens. The dusty roads of the covered wagons have been replaced by broad paved highways and fast automobiles. Bullboats and Conestoga wagons have been replaced by 55 long freight trains and cometlike aircraft. Scotts Bluff, named for one of General Ashley’s fur traders, the brooding sentinel of the Oregon Trail, now belongs to history. ”

“ Others died of pneumonia, or were drowned at the river crossings, or shot themselves with unfamiliar firearms, got run over by the big lumbering wagon wheels, or were gored by unruly oxen. Another menace was the buffalo, which was hunted as a fine source of food. Unless approached gingerly, big herds of these creatures would sometimes stampede, making the earth tremble, trampling to death the unwary hunter. In the desert of the Great Basin, more of the travelers were killed by the intense heat, alkali dust, and parching thirst. ”

“ The Cheyenne-Deadwood Trail crossed a new Army-built iron truss bridge over the North Platte at Fort Laramie.
The last chapter in the pre-settlement history of Scotts Bluff could be entitled “The Cowboy Era.” The open range cattle industry really began during Oregon Trail days, when sharp traders in the Fort Laramie area discovered that there was profit in exchanging one head of fat cattle for two that were worn out. They also discovered that oxen wintered well in the Laramie River Valley. Demand for cattle increased with the big Utah overland freighting business of the 1850’s. ”

“ The early history of Scotts Bluff is closely linked with the history of the western American fur trade.
First White Men at Scotts Bluff
Fur traders were the first white men known to have seen Scotts Bluff. They were the returning Astorians—a group of seven men under Robert Stuart, traveling from their trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River to St. Louis. On Christmas day, 1812, Stuart recorded in his journal:
21 miles same course brought us to camp in the bare Prairie, but were fortunate in finding enough of driftwood for our culinary purpose. ”

“ An orientation map and bronze indicators will enable you to trace the route of the Oregon and Mormon Trails through this valley, and to determine the direction of the following points of interest: Courthouse Rock, Chimney Rock, Castle Rock, Rebecca Winters’ Grave; Agate Springs Fossil Quarries, Fort Mitchell, Fort Laramie, and Laramie Peak.
A trail south from the parking area will enable you to reach a point overlooking the Visitor Center, Mitchell Pass, and the beginning loop of the Summit Road. Beyond Dome Rock is Gering Valley, through which was the Robidoux Pass route of the Oregon Trail. ”

“ The first transcontinental telegraph line, up the Platte route through Mitchell Pass, ended the meteoric Pony Express. In 1860 Edward Creighton of the Pacific Telegraph Company had reconnoitered the Oregon Trail via Mitchell Pass. The active construction of the line took but a few months, in 1861, and in October telegrams were going to California. Service in the early days was hampered by 45 Indians, suspicious of the “singing wires,” who frequently burned down the poles. There was an early telegraph station at Fort Mitchell, at the foot of Scotts Bluff. ”

“ In the fifties and sixties Scotts Bluff witnessed dramatic changes.
The first mail service up the Platte route was inaugurated by the Mormons; after the army occupied Fort Laramie, military dispatches were carried on regular schedules to Eastern command posts. Public mail service to California began in 1851. By 1860 the Central Overland and Pike’s Peak Express Company held a monopoly on mail contracts between the Missouri and the Pacific.
No frontier institution better dramatizes the spirit of American enterprise than the famed Pony Express, fast biweekly mail service. ”

“ Every neck is stretched further, and every eye strained wider. Away across the endless dead level of the prairie a black speck appears against the sky, and it is plain that it moves. Well, I should think so! ”

“ The badlands area is of historical interest since it was the impassability of this ground that forced the earliest emigrants on the trail to detour away from the river, first through Robidoux Pass, and later through Mitchell Pass. The badlands are also of exceptional geologic interest as an example of rapid erosion in soft rock beds of comparatively uniform composition. ”

“ The California gold rush would soon burst in a torrent up the North Platte migration corridor.
Scotts Bluff and The Forty-niners
Early in the spring the Forty-niners converged by steamboat upon the Missouri River towns of Independence, Westport, and St. Joseph; assembled wagons, animals, and provisions; and organized into companies. Eager to reach the new Eldorado, they were undismayed by 21 the prospective 2,000-mile trek across hostile plains and mountains. On May 1, as soon as the prairie grass was green, the great gold rush began. The Oregon Trail became the California Road. ”

“ SCOTTS BLUFF was a celebrated landmark on the great North Platte Valley trunkline of “the Oregon Trail,” the traditional route of overland migration to Oregon, California, and Utah. Today the massive castellated bluff looks down upon concrete highways, railways, airports, irrigated farms, and bustling communities of the mid-20th century ”

“ About 100 miles downstream from Scotts Bluff, near a famous Oregon Trail campsite, is a rock shelter, excavated by the Nebraska State Historical Society in 1939, which contained evidence of 7 occupations over a period of 2,000 years. These range from the Intermediate Lithic, or second level at Signal Butte, through the Woodland, Upper Republican, and Dismal River complexes of the Ceramic Period.
When white men first penetrated Nebraska, about A. D. 1700, the Central Plains were divided into hunting areas held by tribes living in large fortified villages. ”

“ The Badlands regions of western Nebraska and South Dakota have become world famous for their extensive deposits of fossils of mammals and other animals that lived during the Oligocene and Miocene Epochs of the Cenozoic Era. The Brule clay formation of Scotts Bluff and vicinity is particularly rich in fossil remains of extinct animals of Oligocene age, 30 to 40 million years ago. These exposed remains gave rise to many Indian legends and were frequently noted by curious emigrants. ”

“ How many Forty-niners? The population of California increased some 40,000 in 1849; it is estimated that 15,000 sailed around Cape Horn or made sailing connections at Panama; of 30,000 who went overland, perhaps 5,000 died en route. In seven succeeding years, 1850-56, the California gold rush was resumed each spring. No official census was possible, but a register kept at Fort Laramie helps to estimate that during the period 150,000 people journeyed overland westward. The peak year was 1852, when an estimated 50,000 emigrants poured through Scotts Bluff Pass. ”

“ When the process of deposit slowed, erosion gained headway, cutting new river valleys in the Plains. High tablelands were left on both sides of the North Platte Valley. Landmarks such as Scotts Bluff and Chimney Rock have hard rock caps that protect them from erosion.
The lower two-thirds of the bluff consists of Brule clay, an Oligocene deposit of buff-colored, soft-textured sandy clay. The badlands formation at the foot of the bluff dramatically demonstrates the rapid erosion of the Brule clay when unprotected by cap rock. ”

“ However, the story of ancient man in this section of the Great Plains is better suggested by five other nearby Indian occupation sites:
Signal Butte.
At the western terminus of Wildcat Hills, about 12 miles southwest of Scotts Bluff, archeologists of Nebraska University, in 1932, probed the top of an isolated bluff which is now famous as a key archeological site. A 13-foot vertical cross section revealed three separate levels, each bearing cultural material. The lowest level is believed to represent a hunting complex (Early Lithic Period) , perhaps 5,000 years old. ”

“ Although collections of stone projectile points, scrapers, hammerstones, knives, clay pottery, and other primitive Indian artifacts have been assembled from scattered sites in the North Platte Valley, the story of prehistoric man in the Scotts Bluff region is still incomplete. Only a dim outline of the ancient past is beginning to emerge from the patient studies of archeologists. ”

“ Cavalcade of the Forty-niners. Original sketch in Oregon Trail Museum.
The California gold rush of 1849 and ensuing years, in addition to being on a much larger scale, was entirely different in character from the earlier Oregon migration. Oregon travelers were families, seeking farms; most of the California emigrants were young men, unmarried or unaccompanied by wives, who were seeking a quick fortune. Young women who did make the hazardous journey were besieged with suitors. There were weddings and honeymoons on the trail. There are also records of gold rush babies born in wagon beds. ”

“ The bighorn and the grizzly, described by early travelers, disappeared by 1860, leaving an occasional rare skull as their last testament. The pronghorn (antelope) is still common in the tablelands north and south of Scotts Bluff, but deer are the only large hoofed animals which still frequent the monument area. Other survivors include red fox, coyote, raccoon, porcupine, badger, beaver, muskrat, and fox squirrel. Prairie dogs, once abundant, have virtually disappeared.
Titanothere skull from the fossil collection, Oregon Trail Museum.
There is a wide variety of bird life. ”

“ They fed on buffalo meat obtained by seasonal hunts, and on corn, beans, and squash grown near their villages. The Pawnee were the dominant Nebraska tribe when the region was first seen by white men, but the region was soon invaded by Sioux, Cheyenne, Kiowa, and other tribes. With the introduction of horses 60 and guns by Europeans, the Plains Indians became the bold, wide ranging buffalo hunters and fighters famous in annals of the white man’s Wild West. ”