Wedding-white thistle poppies speckled the ocean of grass that skirts western Nebraska’s Chimney Rock. With few sounds other than prairie bird songs, and a museum as the only sign of human habitation, it’s easy to imagine how this spire-topped butte looked to travelers almost 200 years ago.
This 325-foot-tall rock formation rose above the Great Plains and was the most-mentioned landmark in journals of wagon train journeyers. From the 1840s until the railroad was built four decades later, an estimated 500,000 mostly European immigrants departed from Missouri and Iowa every spring to search for land and independence in the American West.
They followed the Oregon, California and Mormon Trails, which converged along the Platte River Valley, bringing the squeak of wagon wheels and clop and jangle of oxen and horses to what’s now Bayard, Neb., by mid- to late June. They’d continue on toward Scotts Bluff and then head to Wyoming’s Independence Rock, named for the goal of arriving by July 4 to avoid treacherous weather along mountain passes.
Like other modern visitors to Chimney Rock, I laughed at T-shirts with a primitive computer graphic of a covered wagon and the words, “You have died of dysentery.” I still recall trying to survive the Minnesota-made “Oregon Trail” computer game in the 1970s by quickly typing “Bang!” to hunt.
The TV miniseries “1883″ and books such as “Where the Lost Wander” renewed my interest in the gambles and tolls of these journeys and the impact they carved across indigenous lands, depleting hunting, polluting water sources and leaving few trees, which were scavenged for fires.
According to the Chimney Rock Museum, about one in 10 overland travelers died, and it’s almost surprising that number wasn’t higher given the dangers. An unrelenting sun wilted even the museum visitors who had the relief of clean water and indoor air conditioning. Storms gathered and rolled in swiftly during our visit, and signs warned, “Rattlesnakes! Stay on the trail!”