A Trail Runs Through It
OUTDOOR X 4 - September 2024
By Heide Brandes
Bernard J. Reid was stunned at what he was seeing that swelter ing August day in 1849. He, along with a dozen or so other emi grants traveling in covered wagons, had just reached southeast Idaho to follow the gold trail to California in 1849, and chal lenges, danger and death seemed to follow the emigrants every step of the journey.
After weeks of battling drought, the searing pain of hunger, conflicts with Native American tribes and watching friends and family fall to disease, southern Idaho’s City of Rocks National Reserve must have seemed like a fairy tale land of beauty and respite. Reid spent weeks under a scorching sky in Wyoming, so the Bear Valley and the Bear River section of Idaho leading towards City of Rocks near Almo, Idaho was an oasis of water, wild ber ries, fresh grass, cottonwood trees and game like elk, deer and waterfowl.
“Another two miles (we) enter a rocky dell some 4 miles long by a winding road running among the most grotesque rocks standing out single in the valley, or grouped fantastically together,” he wrote in his diary, now preserved for more than 100 years. “There were sphinxes and statues of every size, and haystacks and wigwams and castles, and towers, and pyramids and cones and projecting turrets and canopies, and leaning columns and so on throughout a thousand varieties of fantastic shapes.”
On a similar fall morning in September, my adventure buddy Lyle and I stood at that same spot where hundreds of thousands of emigrants traveling the California Trail through Idaho saw their first glimpse of City of Rocks National Preserve. After miles of flat plains with mountains smoky in the distance, to go over a hill to see a landscape of weird, towering rocks and formations had to have been mind blowing. It certainly was for us.
In the 10 days we bumped over Idaho’s twisting highways and rocky backroads, the specters of those who forged forward, suffered, died and survived the famed California Gold Trail and Oregon Trail followed us, whispering history into the wind and through the gorges and even in the rushing menacing waters of the river.
During the height of the westward migration from America’s eastern states to Oregon and California from about 1840 to 1869, more than 300,000 stalwart emigrants traveled the Oregon Trail to claim their own piece of the West. Another 200,000 went to seek their fortune in gold along the California Trail between 1841 and 1869.
Of the 2,000-miles of trail stretching from Missouri to the Ore gon Territory, 500 miles went through Idaho, perhaps one of the harshest landscapes the emigrants tackled, besides unforgiving 30 31 desert landscapes and the fearsome Snake River, the emigrants suffered from rampant disease, lethal river crossings, conflicts and starvation. The California Trail wasn’t much better, though cholera took its toll more severely than on the Oregon Trail. Coming up upon a landscape of stone castles, towering granite mountains and hundreds of piles, peaks, steeples and domes must have felt like stepping into a type of Eden. Game abounded, the water was clean, and the landscape was gorgeous. We were here to find those same routes and magic that the emigrants discovered.
It wasn’t hard. We found magic everywhere in Idaho.
A TALE OF TWO TRAILS
“Idaho, what ARE you?” my friend Lyle asked for the umpteenth time since we started our journey through Idaho’s southern and central region three days prior. Neither of us had been to Idaho. I came because a friend told me once it was one of the last truly wild and untamed places in the lower 48. Lyle came for the Oregon Trail… and a bit of adventure as well.
Thanks to the popularity of the series “Yellowstone” spinoff “1883,” which takes place on the Oregon Trail, this westward route that helped shape the West for better or worse has found itself yet again in the spotlight. Unlike Lyle, who had researched and read about the trail for years, I was more ignorant about the history than I cared to admit.
“I love trailing in the footsteps of the most intrepid bunch of dreamers in American history,” Lyle said when I asked him about why he was so into Oregon Trail history. “Imagine… taking off from a stable homeland into the terrifying unknown of ruffage and sage brush with only the rumors of blue shores in Oregon or hopes of finding gold nuggets the size of a goat’s head. That took a lot of bravery and hope.”
According to the U.S. Forestry Service, the main Oregon Trail from Three Island Crossing to Boise was the primary route used for the first 10 years of the trail. Those emigrants who could not cross the Snake River were forced to follow the south side of the Snake River on a route known as the South Alternate. While the California Trail had several different routes to the West Coast, one led California-bound pioneers through southeast Idaho while another went from Salt Lake City northward to Idaho to rejoin the main trail at the City of Rocks near Granite Pass.
The City of Rocks National Reserve was notable for more than its striking landscapes, now a playground for hikers, campers and brave-hearted rock climbers. Many migrations split from the Oregon Trail and followed the California Trail here. 32 ISSUE #52 33 Once in City of Rocks, travelers found themselves overwhelmed and impressed by the magnificent granite rock formations around them. They left their mark at places like Register Rock where they scrawled their name onto the granite in axle grease.
“A. Freeman, June 12.50; T. Tickner, June 12.50” the graffiti reads, next to more modern, shameful garish graffiti from ignorant tourists. I cast my eyes away from the present-day ugly scrawl to wonder about A. Freeman’s reasons for leaving his home to brave the wild west, only to find himself on June12, 1850 right where I was standing.
RUTS IN THE GROUND
Somehow, we lost the hiking trail from where we parked our home on wheels at the Twin Sisters Campsite at City of Rocks. Named for the two giant granite formations that served as a landmark along the California Trail, the Twin Sisters Campsite was within a short hike to Pinnacle Pass, the narrow path that the wagons used to cross over. We meant to hike past the camp up to Pinnacle Pass where rangers told us we could still see the ruts on the granite where the wagon trains passed. Instead, we stumbled among sage brush, climbing in and out of peaks and boulders, utterly lost except for our Twin Sisters landmarks.
Our shoes soaked up the early evening drizzle that was spitting down on us, and more than once, I wondered if we were ever going to find the ruts that Lyle wanted to see so much.
“Is that it?” I asked, as we finally found the narrow pass that could be the only passage the wagons must have taken. Along the rock “road,” two faint indentions ran across the trail, ghosts of more than 200,000 people who stood in the same area we were.
“I think that’s it,” he said, bending down to inspect the maybe 2-foot-long marks. After more than an hour of bushwhacking through the scrub sage and slipping along the sides of moun tains, the marks may have seemed anti-climactic to many.
To us, it was a step back in time. Visitors to Idaho who are searching for history must stop at the National Oregon/California Trail Center of Montpelier, Idaho. In addition to being a wealth of information about the history of the trail and filled with artifacts from brave souls, the center has an interactive exhibit where you become part of a pioneer wagon company headed West. You complete the 2,000-mile journey along the Oregon/California Trail - in just one hour.
Three Island Crossing State Park, located on the Snake River at Glenns Ferry houses the Glenns Ferry Historical Museum and The Oregon Trail History and Education Center, where visitors can learn about pioneer emigrants and Native American history. But if you’re on the road, the history of the trails can be found on two or four wheels.
FOLLOWING THE TRAIL
U.S. Interstate 20 through Idaho cuts through some of the state’s emptiest spaces, volcanic regions and looming mountain ranges, but irrigation has altered the land considerably from what the emigrants saw. These days, green crops and even vineyards have replaced the plains of sagebrush. Back in the day, this region was one of the greatest challenges to those on the Oregon Trail. The Main Oregon Trail Back Country Byway (MOTBCB) today along I-20 follows the Oregon Trail from the crossing of the Snake River near Glenns Ferry to Bonneville Point, southeast of Boise.
Oregon Trail ruts are visible along much of this route, and in several places, you can even hike along the Oregon Trail. The total distance of the byway is 102 miles, and it takes about eight hours to complete the entire route from Boise. In Boise, Idaho’s jumping and hip capital city, the Oregon Trail Reserve’s 77-acre site also boasts of wagon ruts that were carved by thousands of wheels between 1843 and 1867.
The interpretive sites include stories and remnants of the Oregon Trail and the challenges and experiences travelers faced in this area. As we drove the many highways in Idaho, we made it a point to stop at every historical marker we passed. Just south of Boise on the way to surf down the massive mountains of sand at Bruneau Dunes State Park, we veered off to see the Main Oregon Trail Back Country Byway site of Bonneville Point. After traveling through the dry and rough high desert of central Idaho, this point gave the long-suffering emigrants the first glimpse of the Boise River Valley, a green land lined with cottonwood trees and resplendent with lush grass.
At the most southeast point of the trail is Bown Creek, a large granite boulder that became known as an “emigrant post office.” Like at Register Rock, emigrants wrote their names in axle grease here, though time has faded many of the names. It was also near here that the travelers braved the Three Island Crossing, one of the most dangerous and lethal of the Snake River crossings. Because of its deadly currents, many emigrants continued down the south side of the river, and ruts are still vis ible to this day on the bluffs and fields.
At Hot Springs Creek, more ruts are visible on the east side of the creek, and beyond that, the Hot Springs location was mentioned in nearly every emigrant diary. Here, hot water gurgling from underground mixed with a cold-water stream, probably the first “hot bath” many of the pioneers had for weeks. Those springs are no more, however, thanks to modern-day irrigation wells.
NOT ALL RUTS AND REMEMBERING
On our sprawling and road-filled journey through Idaho, we also saw sights the emigrants didn’t. The eerie volcanic fields of Cra ters of the Moon National Monument, roughly three hours east of Boise, is a weird Lovecraftian landscape filled with yawning craters, deep chasms and dark lava caves. It’s stark and menac ing and beautiful at the same time, encompassing 750,000-acres along the Great Rift, a 52-mile-long crack in the Earth’s crust. Celebrating its Centennial of being named a national monument in 2024, Craters of the Moon is simply otherworldly.
I wondered if the emigrants would have thought they were on another planet if they had stumbled upon this hellish and fascinating landscape. North of Boise along the Oregon border, we weaved along a winding road to Hell’s Canyon, the deepest river gorge in North America before heading north to where the Sawtooth Mountains loom like the fangs of some great bear. In Ponderosa State Park near the boutique tourist town of Mc Call, we hiked among cattails and deer and giant Ponderosa pines.
We sipped whiskey among the glassy stares of an incredible deer mount collection, Native American artifacts and Ernest Hemingway collections at the Pioneer Saloon in Ketchum and we lounged in the hot waters of Idaho’s many natural hot springs. On our last day, we trekked 10 miles on the Sawtooth Lake Trail outside of historic Stanley, Idaho to Alpine Lake, a glossy, clear oasis of peaceful views of the scenic peaks of Grand Mogul and Elephant’s Perch.
Though the pioneers who traveled over the Oregon Trail in the 1840s and 1850s rarely settled in Idaho, future pioneers did. Today, the state boasts the highest growth in population of any state in the U.S., though the entire state still only has barely over 1.9 million people total. In those 10 days chasing trails in Idaho, we felt like we only scratched the surface. Next time, we will hit the snaky roads that lead to the state’s wild and untamed “top hat” wilderness region where towns are tiny and scattered and the wolves and moose still rule the land.
And, yes, there will be a next time. Idaho is just too adventurous and beautiful for just one road trip.
