Auto Tour Route Guide

National Trails System Office National Park Service Intermountain Region U.S. Department of the Interior National Historic Trails Interpretive Auto Tour Western Missouri Through Northeastern Kansas Courtesy—William Henry Jackson Collection at Scotts Bluff National “Westport Landing” Monument. — by William Henry Jackson oadside Auto Tour Route R signs mark the general routes of the Oregon, California, and Pony Express national historic trails through Auto Tour western Missouri and northeast Kansas. Actual wagon wheel Route ruts, emigrant camps, Pony Express stations, and other places of interest can be visited at the sites listed in this guide. Driving directions to the sites are provided from major highways and nearby towns. To follow overland trail routes between sites, follow the Auto Tour Route highway signs. Generally, local brochures and guides are also available. Entrance and parking fees may be charged at some locations, and hours may vary at the discretion of site administrators. Large groups are encouraged to make prior arrangements for tours, where tours are available. Please respect private property by staying in public areas, and help protect our national heritage by leaving trail resources undisturbed. National Trails System Office National Trails Suite 200 324 South State Street, Box 45155 P.O. UT 84145-0155 Salt Lake City, Interpretive Auto Tour Western Missouri - Northeast Kansas ACROSS THE WIDE ON THEIR OWN MISSOURI he story of the American West is not simply a tale of pioneer ot fit for farming, too windswept and exposed to attract courage and vision—of prairie schooners swaying homesteaders, the “Great American Desert” that Twestward to the strains of heroic music. Rather, it is a complex Nunrolled west of the Missouri River was seen as landscape to be weave of plots and subplots, of romance and religion, of politics crossed on the way to a better place. That crossing, travelers of and money, and of personal and national tragedy. the mid-19th century knew, was, by turn, exhausting and exhilarating, and tedious and terrifying. Emigrants’ excitement Traces of the people, livestock, and wooden wheels that were and anxiety mounted as they prepared to launch their ox-drawn part of those stories can still be found on the landscape. There prairie schooners from St. Joseph and Independence, Missouri, are traces, too, of native peoples whose lives were changed by bustling river ports at the frontier’s edge. To them, the great, gray emigration. This guide will provide descriptions of the historic ribbon of the Missouri was the western shore of civilized society. places where wagon wheels cut into soft stream banks and over Once their wagons rolled off the ferry onto the Kansas side, rolling prairie, where lonely trailside graves lie, where missionary emigrants embarked into unfamiliar country—trespassers on outposts were established for Native Americans, and where Pony Indian lands, and beyond the protection of the government. On Express stations were, and more. the trail, there were no markets, no hospitals, no laws, and no second chances. Pioneers gathered to prepare for their journey at Independence and St. Joseph, Missouri. From there, they would embark From there until they reached trail’s end some 2,000 miles later, across the wide and muddy Missouri River into a strange, the pioneer emigrants were on their own. windswept land of unfamiliar wonders—and dangers. Here we were, without law, without order, and without restraint; in a state of nature, amid the confused, revolving fragments of elementary society! Some were sad, while others were merry; and while the brave doubted, the timid trembled! —Lansford W. Hastings, . I, like every other pioneer, love to live In the winter of 18 and 46 our neighbor got over again, in memory those romantic hold of Fremont’s History of California and . months, and revisit, in fancy, the scenes of the . brought the book to my husband to read, journey. & he was carried away with the idea [of emigrating] too. I said O let us not go! —Catherine Haun, —California emigration of 1849 —Mary Jones, —California emigration of 1846 Interpretive Auto Tour Western Missouri - Northeast Kansas DANGER, DEATH, AND DISAPPOINTMENT ost emigrants lived in fear of Indian attack. Rumors To avoid the fate of the Donner Party, emigrants outfitted themselves carefully before leaving Missouri. They preferred of—even hoaxes about—trailside massacres drifted lightweight farm wagons over heavy Conestogas, and most hitched Mback to Eastern newspapers, and many travelers packed a virtual up sturdy oxen to take them safely across countless river fords and arsenal to protect themselves on the road. For the most part, rugged mountains. They chose foods that would keep—flour, though, their fears were unfounded. Historians conclude that bacon, rice, beans, sugar, coffee—and just enough of those to see more Indian people than emigrants were killed in clashes along them through four to six months of travel. They packed the tools the Oregon and California trails. and hardware they would need to replace fractured wagon axles, shoe oxen, dig out of mud holes, cook meals, and build shelter. A more serious threat to those gathering at the congested Prudent travelers left behind most of their personal belongings, jumping-off places along the Missouri River was a mysterious including books, furnishings, heirloom china, and cherished killer that could neither be seen nor fought: cholera. In the mid-19th mementos, to spare their draft animals the extra weight. The century, no one realized that this virulent and painful intestinal success of the trip depended on it. If the cattle started flagging, infection was caused by bacteria. Spread unknowingly from the contents of the wagon would be tossed out along the road: waterhole to waterhole by sick travelers, the disease dogged sometimes, the wagon itself might be cut down to make a simple emigrants from the Missouri trailheads to Fort Laramie, cart. The loss of oxen could force travelers to turn back for Wyoming, some 600 miles down the road. Many died before Missouri on foot. Some emigrants, in fact, turned back by choice, even crossing the river into Kansas—active and well at breakfast, even after reaching Oregon or California. Their “Promised Land,” and in the grave by noon. it seems, was less than they had dreamed. There were many more worries, too. Accidents, emigrants knew, With all the uncertainties, why did people set out at all? Adventure, were common on the way West. Heavy wagons crushed children wanderlust, gold fever, hunger for land, escape from debt or who slipped beneath their iron-clad wheels; men were killed in prejudice or legal problems, a fresh start under a new name—all gun accidents, often by their own hand; and women died from were compelling motivations. And, in fact, the emigrant death rate complications of pregnancy while on the trail. People and on the trail was no worse than that of eastern cities, where disease irreplaceable livestock were swept away during treacherous river and poverty ran rampant. Hope wrestled with fear as Americans crossings, and some perished in terrifying summer thunderstorms started out across the Kansas prairies—and hope generally won that stabbed the plains with lightning. And of course, the out. sufferings of the Donner Party, trapped by early snowfall in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1846, must have weighed heavily on the minds of many travelers who followed their wheel-ruts toward the Pacific. The heart has a thousand misgivings, and the mind is tortured with anxiety, and often as I passed the fresh made graves I have glanced at the side boards of the wagons, not knowing how soon it would serve as a coffin for some one of us. —Lucy R. Cooke, —California emigration of 1852 “Emigrants Crossing the Plains” - Library of Congress. Interpretive Auto Tour Western Missouri - Northeast Kansas ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE POLITICS AND MANIFEST DESTINY ative Americans also harbored hopes and fears as they migration pressed on, in part because of the dreams and watched the swelling tide of foreign humanity and desires of individual pioneers, and in part because of Nhungry livestock surge into their territory. For centuries before Econtinental politics. The United States was as yet a young nation, Western emigrant trails—or even the United States—were and ambitious. Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase in 1803 had established, native societies had been disrupted by the roughly doubled the size of his country, adding 800,000 square introduction of European diseases, horses, and weaponry. miles of territory between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Eastern tribes displaced by European settlers pressed westward, Mountains. Great Britain, however, continued to control the pushing other tribes out of their native farmlands and hunting continent west of the Rockies; and Mexico ruled California, grounds, and onto the plains. By the 1820s, the U.S. government which then included most of the Southwest. Americans wanted began forcibly removing Indian people from their homes to these lands for the United States. Many claimed that such was make room for settlers, eventually relocating over 10,000 people God’s plan—the Manifest Destiny of the nation. The flow of from more than 20 East Coast and Ohio Valley tribes to “Indian Americans across international boundaries into California and Territory” west of the Missouri River. When emigrant wagons Oregon in the 1840s set that plan in motion. War and the threat rolled westward out of St. Joseph and Independence between of war then made it a reality: Britain gave up Oregon in 1846, 1841 and 1869, they passed the reservations of Eastern tribes such and Mexico was forced to cede California to the United States in as the Shawnees, Delawares, Sauks and Foxes, Kickapoos, 1848. Discovery of gold in California the winter of 1848 triggered Wyandots, and Potawatomis.

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