Travel, Trails and Historical Perspective

This was a day of travel. We're talking 630 miles of travel from south of Amarillo, Texas, to Lincoln, Nebraska. After the break of a long weekend in the mountains, work called me back to reality.

Driving is my preferred mode of travel for my work. There are times when I fly, but most travel through the Plains is about as fast by automobile as it is by air because of multiple stops and then renting a car, etc. Besides, driving time is often productive time. I get a lot of thinking done across the miles.

As I travel I also think about the old trails that crossed the Plains. For the first leg of my trip, the highway followed the old Dodge City to Amarillo trail. Next, I picked up the old Western Trail south of Dodge City and crossed the creek where the cattle herds were held while awaiting their turn into the stockyards for shipment east. At Dodge City I began following the old Santa Fe Trail until turning up US 156 at Great Bend and heading to Ellsworth, Kansas, which was one of the famous "wild west" frontier towns. From there I headed east to Salina and then north toward Nebraska. I crossed a couple of branches of the old trails to the Colorado gold fields of the 1850's and then after entering into Nebraska, I crossed the Pony Express route and the old Overland Route from Independence, Missouri, that angled northwest to the Platte River.

When we think about the wild west we usually don't think about the fact that it started in Kansas. The Kansas cow towns were wild a woolly places until the railroads brought civilization. The Texas Panhandle wasn't settled until after 1876 when the last of the Comanche were driven to the reservations of Indian Territory (Oklahoma).

One of the things that intrigues me about the old trails is how they followed the features of the land. Water was critical, fords across the occasional rivers were important, wood or other fuel for fires was needed, natural features that allowed easy travel for wagons was desired. Campsites were determined by speed of travel as well as by location of water and fuel. Many of the towns of today which dot the Plains, originated with the campsites. That is one reason the space between towns is often somewhat uniform. The distance was determined by the daily travel of an ox drawn wagon. It wasn't really until the advent of the Interstate Highway system that we began to get away from the old trails that crossed the country. Even those roughly follow the old trails. A perfect example is Interstate 80 across Nebraska. It follows the same route as the great westward migration to Oregon and California.

The next time you're traveling across the country, think about why those roads are located where they are and why the towns grew up in their particular locations. It might put a whole new slant on your perspective of history.

Trails and Travel

Historic trails have always interested me. As a child, when we crossed the Chisholm Trail, I expected to see a well-worn and clearly defined path. It was many years before I realized that virtually all traces of the trail had been plowed under, or grown over for years.

This morning I awoke in North Platte, Nebraska. North Platte lies on the great westward immigrant routes of the Oregon Trail, the California Trail, the Mormon Trail, The Pony Express Trail, and the first trans-continental railroad. It also lies not far east of one of the more important cattle trails -- the Texas and Ogalalla Trail, aka Texas and Montana Trail, aka Dodge City and Montana Trail (the one they supposedly followed in "Lonesome Dove"). Today as I travelled south from Nebraska, I basically followed the route of this important cattle trail of the late 1800's.

It is approximately 270 miles from North Platte to Dodge City. I took the most direct route, which is also one of the least travelled routes. South of Oberlin, KS, I took Kansas Highway 23 south into Cimarron, KS, (which lies on the old Santa Fe Trail and is basically where the Cimarron Cutoff branched from the main trail) and then into Dodge City from the west. Of course, Dodge City lies on the Santa Fe Trail and was one of the most important delivery points for cattle moving north from Texas on the Western Trail.

Dodge City was important for the Texas Panhandle in its formative years. The buffalo hunters that eventually wiped out the great herds that roamed the Southern Plains used Dodge City as their outfitting and "jumping off" point. It was the place they brought the hides from the slaughtered buffalo for shipment east. It was also the place to which the bleached bones of the buffalo were delivered some years later for eventual grinding into fertilizer.

When settlers began moving into the Texas Panhandle, many of them arrived first in Dodge City to purchase wagons and supplies for the trip south. For several years, it was the "jumping off" point to the frontier that until 1876 had been the home to the Kiowa and Comanche tribes.

It is interesting to me how few people I saw on the highway as I headed south toward Dodge City. I passed through several small towns, including Gove, KS, the county seat of Gove County, with a population of only 105 people. There were many highway stretches of over 10 miles in which I did not meet another vehicle.

Much of the land that I passed through is in grassland with cattle grazing on it. The early spring rains have been good and the grass is beginning to green. The few areas that were in cultivation had beautiful stands of winter wheat that are nearing the stage when they will shoot up the head of grain. It is beautiful country to one with a Plainsman's eye. I suppose to most people it would be considered pretty barren. I for one, relish the emptiness. I need my space.