Fort Caspar

July 8 2021

Another HOT one today!!!! I think it’s going to top 100 degrees.

The day started with a tour of Fort Caspar.  We were staying right next door so we checked out the museum first thing, it opened at 8:30 so by then we were in the parking lot with the jeep hooked up hoping to get on the road before it got to HOT and windy.

They have several buildings you can look in, we received a special guided tour, we just happened to be there as the curator was unlocking the buildings so he took us inside the main building and said if we stayed with him he would show us the bridge and their collection of wagons.  Sometimes you just get lucky and get a special tour guide.

One of the things we learned was unlike you see on TV the Oregon Trail was almost a steady stream of people all heading for a limited number of, river and pass, crossings all within a few weeks of each other, otherwise you might get trapped in the mountains and possibly snow covered passes.. In Casper’s heyday, people didn’t wander away from the wagon train and get lost. There were so many wagons that people wandered away and then couldn’t find their wagon again. He said those people tagged along with another wagon train going to the same destination as the one they were with in the hopes of finding the relatives or friends they started the journey with.

Here in Casper if you didn’t pay the toll to use the ferry or bridge, to cross the North Platte River it might take a week or more before your turn to make river ford, that put you a week behind everyone else and a week closer to a snow covered/blocked pass.

Someplace I read where this one guy counted over 600 wagons passing his door in one day.

Also unlike on TV just about everyone who could walk, walked beside the wagons which were needed to haul your possessions not you, oxen were the preferred beast of burden, and a large percentage had no wagon but carried a backpack,  pulled a hand cart or pushed a wheelbarrow.

Once we left the museum we made tracks for a free spot with electricity at a small city park about 115 miles away. The drive was up one large hill or mound and down the other with few trees or anything else, one spot did kinda look like the beginnings of the badlands but the camera had a Mary malfunction and the picture didn’t take.

We arrived here at a small free (donations excepted, we always leave a donation) city park, with electricity, around 12:30, by the time we looked up a laundromat and returned with clean clothes, the temperature was right at 100. We didn’t turn on the AC until we got back and it’s taken it several hours to cool off inside. I don’t think it’s going to be that hot tomorrow, only 97. UGH!!!

The End