June 13, 2006 - Scotts Bluff to Guernsey, WY
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| I drove back to the airport and took off in the Citabria around 12 noon. Scotts Bluff Airport is almost 4000 feet elevation, but the density altitude was 7,000 feet because of the heat.
That's Scotts Bluff in the center with Mitchell's Pass to the left. The morning haze had cleared up considerably.
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Approaching Mitchell's Pass from the east.
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| A good look at Eagle Rock and the Visitor's Center. |
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you can see the Trail faintly as it emerges from Mitchell's Pass and heads north-northwest towards the river.
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| You can really see the Ruts in the lower left hand corner. Plus a good shot of the entire Scott's Bluff with the town at the top of the picture. |
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| More ruts. |
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| Great ruts moving horizontally across the picture. |
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Today was nice, weather-wise, although it was getting a little warm. It was less than an hour's flight to my next stop: Guernsey. The Laramie Mountains are just faintly visible to the right. The Laramies were a big deal to the immigrants, because it was their first sight of the Rocky Mountains.
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| Approaching the town of Guernsey. |
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Camp Guernsey Airport (7V6), elevation 4,400 feet. The city shares the airport with the military. It's not a towered airport, so when I made my radio calls on the CTAF/Unicom frequency, and this military sounding voice gave me clearance to land, I was a little surprised.
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| I was the only plane on the small, public ramp. As I walked to the building, the attendant said those magical words "you need the car?" I was on the road within ten minutes, heading for the National Historic Ruts, Fort Laramie and Register Cliffs. |
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| The military owns the other side of the airport. There is a lot of helicopter and C-130 activity here. |
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| The AvGas here was the cheapest by far of my entire three week trip: $3.15. |
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The Oregon Trail came right through here and wore grooves in this rock. This area is a National Historic Landmark.
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| "At this site, where the trail was forced away from the river and crossed a ridge of soft sandstone, the track is worn to a depth of five feet, creating some of the most spectacular ruts remaining along the entire length of the Oregon-California Trail. The geography of the area dictated that practically every wagon that went west crossed the ridge in exactly the same place, with impressive results." |
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| I wonder if the immigrants had any idea that their trail would someday be a tourist viewing site? |
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| Looking west. |
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| [July 2011] An aerial shot looking east to the airport on the left and the Deep Rut Hill area the immigrants came through at center |
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| [July 2011] Very visible ruts running east to west close to the airport (west side). |
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[July 2011] A highway of ruts.
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I left Deep Rut Hill and headed out to the Fort Laramie National Historic Site which is about 12 miles east of Guernsey. I had not realized it was so far out of town, and had flown right by without noticing it.
"One of the most memorable shrines in Western America is to be found in Eastern Wyoming, at the junction of the Laramie and North Platte Rivers. Here preserved as a National Historic Site are the restored remains of Old Fort Laramie, 1834-1890. Perhaps no other place equals its star role in the long epic of frontier history. Few others equal it as a vivid reminder of a heroic past.
Serving successively as log stockade, adobe trading post, and evolving military post, Fort Laramie was a classic setting for the colorful pageant of the West. Explorers, trappers, traders, missionaries, emigrants, freighters, Pony Express riders, stage drivers, cowboys, and homesteaders, as well as soldiers and Indians, all perceived Fort Laramie — whether camp-ground, way-station, provision point, fortification, or temporary home — as a unique island of civilization in the Big Sky wilderness, where the Great Plains merge with the Rocky Mountains.
The key to Fort Laramie's importance was its strategic location on the great central continental migration corridor via the Platte and North Platte Rivers to South Pass. By tradition this is most commonly known as the Oregon Trail."
This is the enlisted barracks.
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| Usually one thinks of a fort surrounded by walls so the bad guys can't get in. Fort Laramie didn't have walls. It consisted of buildings and houses spread out in a large rectangle. Because a large number of troops were based here, they didn't need fortifications and in truth were never attacked. |
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| The staff dressed up in period costumes. This young lady was an Officer's wife. |
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| I did a walking tour of the fort with a tape player that described the fort, each building, and what life was like back in the day. Parades and troop formations were held in the large center area. |
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I'm sure this river was one of the primary reasons for choosing this site for the fort.
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| [July 2011] Back in 2006, I had flown right past Fort Laramie in the Citabria without noticing it. So when I came through in the RV-7 in 2011 I was looking for it and got this good aerial picture. |
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After leaving Fort Laramie, I went back to Guernsey and checked out Register Cliffs. The trail went right by these cliffs and the immigrants chiseled their names into the rock.
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| The whole cliff is covered with graffiti. Unfortunately, it's not all from 1840-1860. I saw quite a bit from 1980-2006. |
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| 1855. I wonder if Willard made it to Oregon? |
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