YOUR CONESTOGA CAME THROUGH HERE

Passing through the Gap, as pioneers called it. It is Mitchell Pass in Nebraska, a break  in the 40 miles of buttes that line the northwest border of the state with Wyoming.  Imagine living in this wagon for months, your home with all your worldly possessions, a home oxen-powered, slower han walking. To the right is Scotts Bluff, to the left is Sentinel Rock. The route here is the Oregon Trail (and other named trails) paralleling the North Platte River, as the South Platte took off southwesterly for California miles behind you.

Initially, the earlier days pioneers tended to travel through the buttes a bit north at Robidoux Pass, because the approach pictured here had some difficult gullies and ravines east of the opening. They were filled in sometime in the 1840s or early 1850s, and thereafter travelers used the one shown. Robidoux was a trader in furs and some supplies to the east of the pass.

Thousands of pioneers came through this openin in the mid- 1800s , possibly some of your own relatives, bound for Oregon's fertile Willamette Valley or eastern Washington, or even Wyoming and Montana (lesser numbers).

Today you can drive in your heated or air-conditioned car along major highway #26 to imagine your ancestor's trip through today's Nebraska along the Platte River -- here at Scotts Bluff the North Platte. He/she probably prevented starvation some days by eating hardtack,  Believe me, it resembles a piece of bread that had been run over by the wheels of your Conestoga wagon a month ago!. I sampled one, hoping my teeth would not break off in the process. It was created by just flour and water, plus salt, perhaps.