Oregon Trail Ruts (plaque two)
OREGON TRAIL RUTS Registered National Historic Landmark Wagon wheels cut solid rock, carving a memorial to Empire Builders. What manner of men and beasts impelled conveyances weighing on those grinding wheels? Look! A line of shadows crossing boundless wilderness. Foremost, nimble mules drawing their carts, come poised Mountain Men carrying trade goods to a fur fair - - the Rendezvous. So, in 1830, Bill Sublette turns the first wheels from St. Louis to the Rocky Mountains! Following his faint trail, a decade later and on through the 1860's, appear staring twisting teams of oxen, mules and heavy draft horses drawing Conestoga wagons for Oregon pioneers. Trailing the Oregon-bound avant garde but otherwise mingling with those emigrants, inspired by religious fervor, loom footsore and trail worn companies -- Mormons dragging or pushing handcarts as they follow Brigham Young to the Valley of the Salt Lake. And after 1849, reacting to a different stimulus but sharing the same trail, urging draft animals to extremity, straining resources and often failing, hurry gold rushers California bound. A different breed, no emigrants but enterprisers and adventurers, capture the 1860's scene. They appear, multi-teamed units in draft -- heavy wagons in tandem, jerkline operators and bullwhackers delivering freight to Indian War outposts and agencies. Now the apparition fades in a changing environment. Dimly seen, this last commerce serves a new, pastoral society; the era of the cattle baron and the advent of settlement blot the Oregon Trail. submitted by John Bradley JEB