The Oregon Trail

by Rinker Buck

  Burnt Ranch was also an important place in the West that influenced frontier development in ways most Americans forget today. In 1857, to encourage continued settlement of the West, Congress passed the Pacific Wagon Road Act, which among other improvements to the trail called for the surveying of a shorter route to Idaho across the bottom of the Wind Rivers and the forested Bridger-Teton wilderness to the west. Frederick W. Lander, a hotheaded but experienced explorer and engineer, was assigned the job. He made Burnt Ranch the trailhead and main supply depot for the trail-building job, which became one of the largest government-financed projects of the nineteenth century. Lander hired hundreds of workers from the new Mormon settlement at Salt Lake and supplied the enterprise with large mule-team caravans that ferried provisions and equipment from U.S. Army depots in Nebraska and eastern Wyoming. “With crowds of laborers hauling wood, erecting buildings and tending stock,” writes historian Todd Guenther, “the area was a beehive of activity.”

  The engineers, logging crews, and workers quickly hacked out what became known as the Lander Cutoff, which saved more than sixty miles, almost a week’s travel, across the mountains. In places, the Lander Cutoff was a steep up-and-down ride, but the route offered cooler, high terrain and plentiful water, an advantage over the scorching desert of the main ruts to the south. Eventually an estimated 100,000 pioneers took this route, and the 230-mile Lander Cutoff was considered an engineering marvel of its time.

  This model of government support for a major development project became popular and was accepted as the new norm for western growth. Each new phase of frontier growth—the railroads, ranching, mining—was also supported by either outright government subsidies, land giveaways, or federally supported irrigation and bridge-building projects. That was the tradition established by the Oregon Trail and it has always amused me that the myth of “rugged individualism” still plays such a large role in western folklore and American values. In fact, our vaunted rugged individualism was financed by huge government largesse.

  For the past week, looking ahead on my maps, I had assumed that a place as busy and prominent in the history of the West as Burnt Ranch would have to be well marked. But nothing was there when we reached what I concluded was the end of the Seminoe Cutoff, and the spot was as deserted as any we found on the trail. A worn pickup road turned north across the river, probably indicating a ranch above, but the heavy screen of cottonwoods and brush growing along the banks prevented me from seeing very much.

  After a long afternoon crossing the unmarked Seminoe Cutoff, I felt that we had to make a certain fix on Burnt Ranch to establish our position before we launched for the pass. My guidebooks and maps showed that a large stone monument—carved and placed by an early trail preservationist, H. G. Nickerson—stood just above the ranch buildings, marking the intersection of the main ruts and the Lander Cutoff. I would have to hike across the river to find the monument and confirm our position.

  Nick was anxious to push on for South Pass, and annoyed that I was being so meticulous. We looked at my maps together and he was certain that the creek bed in front of us was Oregon Slough, which we could splash through right now and regain the main ruts over the hill we saw ahead. But there were several piles of rusty water pipe and pumping equipment lying around, and the creek looked so evenly cut that I suspected it had been rechanneled into an irrigation ditch, which might not run in the original direction indicated on the map. This was not the Burnt Ranch I had learned about in my books.

  “Boss, it’s your readin disease again,” Nick said. “You’re overthinkin the problem. The trail is right there, over that hill.”

  “Nick, we have to know. South Pass isn’t that easy to find and this is our last fix.”

  “I bet you the pioneers didn’t mess with crap like that. They just went right over the hill.”

  But my abundance-of-caution gene wouldn’t let go. This was our last reliable fix before South Pass. I had to know.

  “There were a hundred wagons here every day when the pioneers were coming through,” I said to Nick. “They followed the wagons in front of them. I’m hiking in to find the Nickerson marker so we’re sure.”

  I was pleased about the chance to explore Burnt Ranch for another reason. The site was once a famous road ranch and stagecoach stop, and this is what I had come west to see. It was a serious miscalculation, but I had no way of knowing this as I stepped off the wagon and hiked toward the river.

  • • •

  Behind the screen of trees along the river I found a narrow wooden bridge that crossed the Sweetwater. The bridge had no side rails and was barely wide enough for a pickup, but there was a large open field before it, and Nick could always swing the team around there if he decided not to cross. While I hunted for the trail monument, I decided, Nick could bring the mules into the ranch, water them, and let them stand in the shade. I walked out to where he could see me, yelled, and then motioned with my hand for him to come in and cross the river.

  While Nick drove in with the mules, I walked beyond a thick grove of trees, which had hidden from my view on the trail an attractive cluster of restored log cabins, an implement shed, and farming equipment parked on the plains. The buildings and farm equipment indicated that Burnt Ranch was probably being used as a cow camp. But the place seemed unoccupied and I assumed that it was like a lot of western ranches now—a lonely outpost for grazing cattle, checked once or twice a week by an absentee owner.

  While I began exploring for the Nickerson marker, I heard the clatter of wheels crossing the wooden bridge and Nick frantically screaming at the mules, especially Bute, and at first thought that he might have tumbled the rig into the river when the mules spooked on the narrow span. But as I ran back I saw the wagon emerge through the tree line, apparently unscathed. Nick looked rattled when he pulled up.

  “Well, that nearly ended the trip right there, Boss. Frickin Bute wouldn’t cross but the other two yanked her along. There’s no way we’re drivin the team back across that bridge.”

  “Ah, shit, Nick. I guess I made the wrong decision.”

  “I’m not commentin on your decision. We’re just goin to have to walk the team back across one by one, and then pull the wagons by hand.”

  Pulling four thousand pounds of wagon across the narrow bridge would be nearly impossible. We were trapped on the wrong side of the Sweetwater. I had blown this one and we both knew it.

  While we were standing there thinking about a solution, a pickup truck pulled to an abrupt stop on the hill across the river, blowing off a large cloud of dust. The driver jumped out and crouched on the ground, reading our wagon tracks in the sand. Then he returned to his truck, slammed the door, raced down the hill, and turned in at the gates in a plume of dust, heading straight for us.

  “It looks like we’ve got company,” I said. “This must be the rancher who owns the place.”

  “What does he care?” Nick said. “We’re not doin him any damage here.”

  “From the way he’s driving that truck, I think he cares.”

  I decided to meet the pickup halfway and walked back across the bridge. The pickup driver locked his wheels and skidded sideways to a halt beside me. The thin, angry man inside started screaming out the open window before he had even stopped. He looked sixtyish and was dressed in work clothes and a ball cap, and he had probably driven out to his spread that day to check his cows or irrigation pipe. The woman in the passenger seat beside him, who I assumed was his wife, was glaring past him at me. It was soon clear that nothing I said was going to be of much use.

  “Do you realize that you’re on private property?” he said. “My private property?”

  “Sir, I do realize that. I’m sorry if I am inconveniencing you. We’re just riding this rig across from St. Joe and . . .”

  “Bullshit! Anybody good enough to get a wagon from St. Joe would know this is the last crossing of the Sweetwater and you just crossed it the wrong way. How stupid do you think I am?”

  I explained
that I had crossed the river onto the ranch to find the Nickerson marker. I want to confirm the waypoint of Burnt Ranch as my last fix before South Pass.

  “Well I can confirm it’s Burnt Ranch! I own it. You’re violating private property.”

  It was immediately clear that after nearly a thousand miles of travel across the trail we had found the one asshole in a hundred who lacked the hospitality we had found everywhere else. The protocols for crossing the vast rangeland across the West are quite flexible, and for a good reason. Most ranches spread out from a relatively small parcel of deeded land along a source of water to the much larger leased grazing parcels owned by the BLM. This patchwork of ownership often makes it impossible for outsiders to recognize the boundaries between private and public land, and the BLM discourages private property owners from denying access between its allotments, which would make them landlocked and thus of little use. This is particularly important along the National Historic Trail route we were following, because the BLM and the park service are also charged with guaranteeing access to valuable historic sites.

  With our covered wagon and mules, we hardly represented a threat to the rancher, but I would later learn that he’d had a difficult, erratic relationship with OCTA for years, sometimes flatly denying access to small groups of trail enthusiasts who wanted to see Burnt Ranch and the Nickerson marker, but in other years relenting and allowing groups in. (Ironically, that summer OCTA was giving him a “Friend of the Trail” award in an attempt to placate the landowner of an important trail site.) Our problem that day was straightforward. To get from the BLM land at the edge of the Burnt Ranch entrance, where we had every right to be, to the historic marker on the main ruts, we had a few private acres to cross. But for reasons we never did understand this had set the rancher off, and anger management did not appear to be his strong suit.

  “Sir, now that you’ve told us this is Burnt Ranch, we’ll be on our way,” I said. “It will take us some time. We don’t think our mules will cross the bridge again, so we’ll lead them across and then pull the wagons by hand.”

  “If they were my goddamn mules they would cross,” the rancher said. “What kind of a horseman are you? You know what I’d do if I owned those mules, don’t you?”

  “No, sir, I don’t.”

  “I’d whip the shit out of them and show them who’s boss.”

  “Well, sir . . .”

  “Get in the back of the pickup. I’ll run you to the wagon.”

  Before I could even sit down in the bed of the pickup, he stepped on the gas and bounced off over the bridge, and I was thrown down beside his corgi cow dog.

  When we got to the wagon, Nick seemed to sense how bad the situation was but decided that he wasn’t going to let that prevent him from being himself. He stepped forward to the truck and reached out his palm to shake the rancher’s hand, but he ignored him. Pulling off his cap and throwing it onto the hood of his truck, the rancher reached inside his glove compartment and yanked out a BLM map. Red-faced and angry, he spread the map on the hood of his truck.

  “You see these yellow shaded areas here? That’s BLM land. You see these blue areas? That’s state land. These little white areas are private land. As you can see, you are now on private land. My land.”

  “Well, sir . . .”

  “You don’t have to be yes-sirring and no-sirring me to death. I’m just trying to help you here. Do you want an education, or not?”

  “I would love an education,” I said.

  “You mean to tell me you traveled all this way without a BLM map?”

  The rancher reminded me of those Emperor Nero state troopers who cannot hand out a routine speeding ticket without pestering a driver with a string of useless and humiliating questions. The cops of America are poster-boys of low self-esteem. Their uniforms, silly hats, and sparkling patent leather girdles freighted down with shiny handcuffs, walkie-talkies, and spray canisters of Mace apparently do not make them feel secure enough, so they always add the hostile interrogation to make sure that the accosted citizens know who is in charge. The owner of Burnt Ranch was that kind of control freak. He loved asking snarling questions that really weren’t questions at all.

  But it would defeat my purpose to confront him. All I wanted to do now was get the wagon back across the river, hitch the team, and move west on the trail. I would have to swallow my pride and give the rancher the law enforcement treatment. Kiss the trooper’s butt and appeal to his low IQ by making him feel that everything he says is profoundly useful.

  “I probably should have thought to carry a BLM map,” I said to the rancher. “That is a very good suggestion.”

  At this point, the rancher’s spousal unit decided that he wasn’t doing a good enough job insulting us. By now she had stepped out of the pickup cab and she started yelling across the truck.

  “Honey! Don’t listen to him! He’s lying! They’re not riding the Oregon Trail! They just came out here today to violate our property rights!”

  This harridan performance by the rancher’s wife aroused their dog, the corgi in the back of the pickup, who apparently was quite influenced by her moods. I had always thought of corgis as harmless lapdogs, ritually placed across Queen Elizabeth’s knees when she was photographed for one of her jubilees, more or less just a slightly uglier and beefier cousin of the next most ridiculous canine brat, the Pekinese. But I was misinformed about this. Corgis are vicious little bastards, bred for sheep and cattle herding. They are built low to the ground for snapping at the hooves of cows and sheep, and when that doesn’t work, taking a bite out of their snouts.

  When the rancher’s shrew began to shriek, the corgi jumped off the pickup and attacked Olive Oyl. The corgi’s mouth snapped shut into a lock grip on Olive Oyl’s rump almost before it landed. Olive Oyl managed to turn her neck enough to get a bite or two out of the corgi, but it really wasn’t much of a contest and the corgi wouldn’t let go. At my feet, in between me and the rancher, it was just one madass tangle of dogs yelping and blood falling to the sand, and Nick ran over and tried to separate the dogs.

  “Just kick the shit out of that little son of a bitch,” the rancher yelled. “It’s a corgi. You can’t hurt him! Kick the living shit out of that stupid bastard.”

  Nick had the sense not to do that, and the rancher stepped over and did it himself, booting the corgi so hard that it tumbled several times over the patchy brown grass, yelping in pain.

  Bending down on one knee, Nick retrieved Olive Oyl, who was now bleeding from the rump with a visible patch of her flesh and hair gone, and cradled her in his arms. Speechless, but trying to comfort Olive Oyl, he turned for the wagon to place her on my bed.

  “You’ve got to kick these sons of bitches to get them to behave,” the rancher said. “Corgis don’t mind it.”

  His wife added a quite useful thought of her own.

  “You see, even our dog doesn’t like your dog! Why did you come onto our land?”

  Apparently the rancher was quite used to the splendid non sequiturs of his wife and he ignored her. But the Corgi’s attack, and now his shrewish wife, made him feel sorry for us. Suddenly contrite, he motioned me back to the hood of his truck and stabbed with his finger on the map.

  “Okay, your only water after you clear the pass is Pacific Springs, but I don’t think you’re going to make that tonight. You should stop here. You’re welcome to camp on our land, or go through the gates and lay over on the BLM land. You’ll be comfortable here, and have water. That’s what I would have told you if you had called first.”

  Mood swings this beautiful are ordinarily something to be enjoyed, but the rancher was too angry to be trusted. I didn’t want to antagonize him again by rejecting his offer. For now, I would temporize and continue to suck ass.

  “Thank you,” I said. “That’s a generous offer, sir, but maybe we should get the wagon back across the bridge first. Then I’ll discuss with my brother where we’ll camp.”

  “Suit yourself. I’m just offering y
ou a nice place to camp.”

  He stepped to the back of his pickup and grabbed a chain from his hodgepodge of ranch gear.

  “Here,” he said. “Hook this to your pole and my ball hitch when I back up. We’ll get your wagon back across the river.”

  It was glum work, but I was happy to have the wagon moving in the right direction again. After chaining the wagon to the pickup, I followed it across the bridge, looking back over my shoulder. Nick, downcast and sullen, was walking over to the fence line to get the first mule, and I felt awful for him and for Olive Oyl. I checked on her in the back of the wagon before I turned to go for the other mules myself, and she was lying in a small pool of blood on one of my bed blankets, fast asleep. All of this was my fault, I thought, but I had to remain focused and get us off Burnt Ranch.

  Our Burnt Ranch hitch-up was the swiftest in Oregon Trail history. Without saying a word to each other, Nick and I placed the mules abreast, yoked up, and hooked the traces, and Nick scrambled up the wheels and nodded that he was ready.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he said.

  “Go,” I said. “I’ll walk beside the wagon until we’re through the gates. I want to put a blanket on top of Olive Oyl.”

  “See if she wants any water.”

  After we cleared the gate, I climbed into the back of the wagon on the run. Olive Oyl woke up and greedily lapped up the water I held for her in my lap, and then began licking my hands and whimpering, begging for sympathy. I shimmied forward in the wagon on my rear to our food bin and found some beef jerky, which she swallowed in a few bites. She licked the wound on her rump a few times and then dozed off underneath the blanket I put over her.

  “Nick,” I called forward. “I think she’s all right. She drank water and I gave her some beef jerky. She just wants to sleep.”

  “Oh, she’ll heal,” Nick called back. “Here come the bumps. I’m taking the mules across the creek.”