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Welcome
to Point of Interest Road
Signs! A
collection of photos of road and trail signs. Click
here for more Wyoming Signs
Tree
Rock
Location
of sign - Guernsey, Wyoming - leave Guernsey by South
Guernsey Road. After crossing the bridge, follow the signs to
Oregon
Trail Ruts State Historic Area. You take the river front road, west.
Photo
taken July 2007
Photo
courtesy of Jimmy Wayne
Text
of sign:
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
weighting on those
griding wheels? Look! A line of shadows crossing boundless
wilderness.
Foremost, nimble mules
drawing their carts, come poised Montain 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
throught the 1860's,
appear straining, 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 differnt 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. Dimley seen, this last commerce serves a
new,
pastoral society; the era of the cattle baron and the advent of settlement
blot the Oregon Trail.
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