EMIGRANT WAGONS AS EARLY AS 1841.

The lone wagon shown against Scott's Bluff is the type that had to be lowered over Windlass Hill. See text below.

We have talked about Ogallala and Sidney to explain the relationship to the westward movement as being in the middle of an area along the North and South Platte rivers . Here geography resulted in the ongoing arrival of future residents of the Pacific coastal states via the Columbia River (pretty much straight west of the Platte) and California via the Mohave Desert and plains. We need to backtrack a bit to the earlier 1800s.

 

In the beginning, the valley of the Platte was a logical entry through the increasingly rugged sets of buttes and mountains that must be overcome. As early as the 1820s fur trappers, most of them traveling alone or in small groups, used the Platte as the route to the Rocky Mountains to look for beaver. Beaver hats popular with wealthy Easterner dudes and, even more, perhaps, British "toffs." created a booming market for beaver fur.

 

 The Native Americans, however, were increasingly  concerned about the inroads of pioneers into their hunting grounds. William Ashley and his men began to use the Platte corridor to avoid the Lakota and Cheyenne tribes with homelands more to the north from 1824 to 1827.  In 1832, Benjamin Bonneville successfully traveled through the Platte area and built a  trading camp or small fort in Wyoming that was a failure. However, Bonneville continued on to the Columbia River, where Fort Astor and later Fort Vancouver were operated by Hudson's Bay people and viewed him rightly as a competitor. Bonneville proceeded then to explore the California cutoff trail that emanated at the junction of the North and South Platte of today's Nebraska. It tended to follow what is today I-80, formerly the Lincoln Highway, first transcontinental highway.

 

You have heard of the "Green Mountain boys" These were Rocky Mountain area trappers who decided to have an annual sort of trade fair, where potential buyers and sellers (usually individuals or small partnerships) met somewhere in the Rockies to trade, usually Wyoming. These affairs turned out to be for riotous living, drinking, meeting females (mostly local Indians smitten with gifts of goods never before imagined). More business minded, Ashley used 10 mule-drawn wagons and 81 men to protect the booty to cross the Wind River Mountains, and reported to the government of the feasibility of such travel.

 

The first known party to travel through the Platte Valley was the Bidwell-Bartleson Party in 1841. The wagon trains would continue to bring new western residents toward the Pacific until after the transcontinental railroad was completed to their destinations in 1869. Wagons continued to roll in ever fewer numbers but on through the 70s, thus mingling with gold prospectors and cattlemen in the Platte area for awhile.

 

During my recent explorations of the North Platte and northwest corner of Nebraska area, I visited with keen interest a wagon train barrier that became known as Windlass Hill at what is now called Ash Hollow State Historical Park. The name "Windlass" says it all. It was a deep valley where emigrant wagons and teams were stumped for awhile. They figured out how to lower the wagons into the valley by fastening them to teams of oxen at the top of the slope or to strong men and ropes, thus slowing the descent to a manageable speed and avoiding damage. Once down into this verdant, spring-fed valley of green grass and one of the only tree groves in the surrounding area, the travelers tended to hang out there for several days to rest, maybe dance a little, and let their teams of oxen or horses fill their bellies with good grass The valley continued as part of the Oregon Trail route. Today the hill still shows ruts from all those wagon wheels down the slope. Like me, many were thrilled to walk in or near the ruts "drug out of the dirt" fully 175 years ago!  In one case, a ravine maybe five feet deep has resulted, path for water drainage or collection, but mostly the ruts are shallow. As an historical park, a walkway has been provided all the way to the top of the slope. In 2015 during the seemingly endless rainy spring the place was a paradise of greenery. Can't you just see the hot, tired travelers stretched out on the grassy hillside and hear their laughter and banter as they relaxed, cooked, sewed their clothes, repaired damaged wagons, and enjoyed the relief to be down a stern barrier looking westward?

(Windlass Hill or Ash Hollow site is not far south of today's Lake Mcconaughy or village of Lewellen.)