Chimney Rock

Two days before pioneers reached the sandstone formation of Chimney Rock, they could see its solitary finger that, in the words of A. J. McCall, 1849, looked like "an old ruin, then a very sharp cone, more the shape of a chimney than anything else."

The Indians in the area, unfamiliar with the architecture of the white man's buildings, had another name for this landmark; they called it Elk's Penis.  Oh, my!  I really wouldn't know if that's appropriate so I'll just assume their reference is correct.

Fort Kearney to Chimney Rock

Tim and I drove the 250 miles between Kearny, Nebraska to Chimney Rock National Historic Site in approximately four hours, arriving in plenty of time to stop at the small visitors center a walkable half-mile from the campground.

As we trudged up the hill to the center on a miserably hot summer day, I wondered how the pioneers walked, many of them barefoot, mile after weary mile.  Just imagine...On a good day, the pioneers on the Oregon Trail could cover 30 miles; it would have taken them more than a week to walk the same distance our RV, the Dawntreader covered in an afternoon.

Approaching Chimney Rock, a painting by William Henry Jackson

“We halted in the neighborhood of the Chimney Rock…It is visible at a distance of thirty miles and has the unpoetical appearance of a hay-stack with a pole running far above its top.”  Joel Palmer, 1845

A 1870 engraving of Chimney Rock juxtaposed to my photo.

Chimney Rock rises 300 feet above the Platte River Valley.  Approximately 40 million years ago, volcanoes lifted the Colorado Plateau; then wind and water chiseled away the rock and soil until its spire appeared.  Those forces are still at work today.

Margaret Irving Carrington accompanied her husband, Colonel Henry Carrington, and 2,000 troops on their way to northeastern Wyoming to build Fort Phil Kearny on the Bozeman Trail.  In an 1879 book, she pondered the fate of this formation:

"Chimney Rock is fast gathering about it the debris of waste and will soon lose the bold outline and marked symmetry of its present proportions.  It is now much more beautiful than when Fremont visited it, and is worn to such a fine delineation that it seems that the first summer's storm or winter's blast must topple it from its base and destroy it utterly."

Of course, the Army soldiers who used it for target practice in the 1860s did not help matters.  Nor did the thunderstorm in 1992 when lightning struck it, causing rocks the size of shuttle buses to fall from the spire.  One wonders how much longer its soft sandstone tower will stand.

Tim and I stopped overnight at Chimney Rock Pioneer Crossing campground which is less than a mile as the crow flies from this outcropping.  Our site, one of 16 in the small campground, gave us a ringside seat to watch the sun fade from the rock's spire.

Chimney Rock is illuminated at night.  It is and was a beautiful--and to the pioneers--welcome sight.

Westward, Ho!

Pioneers traveling the Oregon Trail began their 2,000-mile-plus journey at Nauvoo, IL or St. Joseph or Independence, MO.  I think Stafford, KS should be added to that list.  At least, that's where Tim and I began our journey to Oregon.

Traveling 230 miles due north of my family's farm near Stafford, KS to Kearney, NE, we joined the ghosts of the 300,000 pioneers who traveled the Oregon Trail, beginning in 1836 and diminishing in 1869 with the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869.

Old Fort Kearney, Nebraska Territory by William Henry Jackson

"We passed Fort Kearny this day; it is the first western fort I have seen.  It consists of about twenty houses made of sod, some roofed with the same material, walls two feet thick.  They must be very warm.  There is neither blockhouse nor palisade.  A few soldiers and two or three cannon are all the evidence one has that it is not some outlandish village." John Banks, 1849

Established on the banks of the Platte River in 1848, Fort Kearney was the first fort built to protect travelers on the Oregon Trail.  It also served as a home station for the Pony Express riders and the Pawnee Scouts, those Indian warriors who joined the U.S. Army as scouts and cavalrymen.  The fort began a regular once-a-month mail service when a stagecoach route ran from Salt Lake City to Independence, Missouri.  Later, it sheltered crews building the Union Pacific railroad.

“We arrived at Fort Kearny after noon.  Here we had an opportunity of sending letters to our friends.  The officers are going to send a mail to the States in the morning and kindly offered to transmit any letters we wished to send.”  Joshua D. Breyfogle, 1849

Today at the Fort Kearney State Historical Park there is a wooden fortification, a blacksmith shop and  wooden posts that show where soldiers' and officiers' quarters once stood.  The small museum in the Visitors Center is definitely worth a stop.

The Kearney Hike and Bike Trail

We stayed two nights at the scenic Fort Kearney State Recreation Area beside the Platte River and very near the fort.  Anxious to get back in the routine of walking after a month's hiatus, we were delighted to find that the Kearney Hike and Bike Trail begins at the park and extends for 1.8 miles.

Settlers heading west on the Oregon Trail described the Platte River as a mile wide and an inch deep.  Due to farming practices and irrigation, today's Platte is not nearly as wide as it once was, but it's hard to dismiss its significance to the pioneers headed west along its 1,050 mile length.

The Great Platte River Road Archway

That importance was driven home to us when we visited The Great Platte River Road Archway just three miles east of Kearney.  

The Great Platte River Road Archway

Stretching across busy Interstate 80, this tourist attraction is hard to miss.  

For a nominal fee and equipped with an audio headset, we rode the escalator to the top of the arch and stepped off underneath an expansive sky painted on the ceiling.  

As we walked the length of the archway and back again, we listened to the stories of the Oregon Trail, the Pony Express stations, the joining of the Union & Pacific railroad and finally the Lincoln Highway.  Each followed the Platte River Valley; all served to impress upon us the history and importance of this valley.

As we retrace the route along the river that the pioneers bound for Oregon took, we'll be stopping at famous landmarks along the way.  I think we're off to a good start.

“Eastward I go only by force but westward I go free…that way the nation is moving, and I may say that mankind progresses from east to west.”  Henry David Thoreau

The Road To Independence

Our son texted us this morning that his paycheck finally showed money taken out for his 403B retirement fund.  Tim responded, "Congratulations!  You are now on the road to financial independence.  You just need to be patient through these next 40 years."

However, financial planning is not the subject of this blog post.  Instead, Independence, Missouri is.  Back at the beginning of June 2017, we followed the road to Independence on our way to my family's farm in Kansas.  I meant to write this post upon our arrival at the farm, but life became too hectic then.  So I'm playing catch up here!

"Heading Out of Independence" painting by Charles Goslin

Independence, MO was a starting point for many pioneers traveling to Oregon.  Oregon is where we're headed now, too, and just like those early settlers, we plan to follow the Oregon Trail west.  So it's fitting that I back up and include our stop in Independence as part of The Jacobsons' Journey.

Knowing our summer plans, we made a point of visiting the National Frontier Trails Museum there.  Its name, National Frontier Trails, is a clue that this museum's scope will cover more than just the Oregon Trail.

It also had exhibits about the Santa Fe and the Mormon trails, but the Oregon Trail was clearly its focus.  It's a small museum that's off the beaten path, but we found it interesting, if only for the displays of quotations from pioneer journals and diaries such as this one from Margaret A. Frink, Oregon pioneer, 1850.  "I think none of us have realized until now the perils of this undertaking..."  Reading these lent an immediacy to the trail's history for me.

Ezra Meeker

The Frontier Trails Museum also had a bust of Ezra Meeker who is considered the Father of Oregon Trail preservation.  Meeker first traveled the Oregon Trail in 1852, but in 1906 he journeyed east on the trail to draw attention to the need to preserve the trail.  Before he died in 1928, he made three more trips, by wagon in 1910, by automobile in 1916, and by airplane in 1924.  If he were still living, I have no doubt that he would have added travel by RV to his list.

"Go west, young man!" was an admonition attributed to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, but in fact another newspaper man, John Soule, from Terre Haute, Indiana first penned those words in an editorial.  In his early years before he came around to Soule's way of thinking and quoted his words in an 1865 editorial of his own, Greeley was not so enthusiastic about westward expansion; he thought it foolhardy.  He warned, "It is palpable homicide to tempt or send women and children over this thousand miles of precipice and volcanic sterility to Oregon...This migration wears an aspect of insanity..."

Oh, boy!  Are Tim and I insane to follow in their footsteps?  I'm wavering over the advisability of crossing Wyoming on backroads instead of the interstate.  Will there be service stations and fuel stops?  I guess we'll find out.

Home for Harvest

Tim and I have spent the last four weeks on the family farm in Kansas helping with wheat harvest. 

Now I know how the astronauts felt when they were out of communication with Houston while they traveled around the dark side of the moon.  Not that Kansas is the dark side, but lately our lives have been too hectic to blog or participate in social media.  We've been out of touch.

In fact, wheat harvest is a lot like a tsunami.  It picks you up, pulls you under, and spits you out hopefully on shore once it's over.

Emily, Brad, Hanna, Mark, Julia and Matt

But before harvest began, there was a family wedding,

Tim, Cindy, Phyllis, Willard, Becky, Doug and Miles

a family reunion,

Mary, Matthew, Mom and I

and a trip to the zoo with my college friend Mary and her grandson Matthew.

Tim, Derek and Miles

Then it began!  Wheat harvest is a team effort.  It is an intense time when one eye is on the weather and the other on the steering wheel of whatever implement you are driving 

Nephew Miles

be it the combine, 

Nephew Derek

the grain cart, 

Tim

the semi trucks,

Dad

the tractor, 

Mom and I

the pickup pulling the fertilizer tank necessary to keep the irrigation systems supplied,  (Are these the right levers to turn, Jon?)  

Jon

or the ATV for the management to use.

Derek and Chet

Even the farm dog Chet got in on the action.

The goal is to get the wheat cut before a thunderstorm delivers hail that could wipe out the crop.  

We did have a hail storm that straphed a few fields but we were lucky.  The damage was minimal.

In point of fact, this harvest produced better than expected results.  Last fall my dad picked up a fist full of dirt and said he'd never seen it so dry.  It was nothing more than dust.  But this spring timely rains arrived just as the wheat heads were beginning to fill.  Astoundingly, one of our non-irrigated fields which typically produced 35 to 40 bushels, yielded 65 bushels to the acre.

Dad, Derek, Miles and Tim (Jon, not pictured)

On the morning after the hailstorm, a corporate meeting of McClure Farms employees occurred on the back porch.  I wish I could report that stockholders would receive a dividend this year, but that is still to be determined when fall harvest rolls around.

Dad

My 86-year-old father has driven the combine for 67 years now.  I don't think we could have kept him out of the cab even if we'd tried.  

Dad at the end of his shift

Miles took the helm whenever dad grew tired but my father still put in an eight-hour day.

Derek

Harvest ended last Monday, June 26th, but not knowing when the end would come, Tim and I factored in an extra week's stay.  I needed that time to decompress and set the farmhouse in order, doing tasks that my mother can no longer accomplish.

We left the farm this morning so I have no excuse for setting this blog aside any longer.

Goodbye, Kansas!