North and South forks of the Platte, a distance of eighteen and a half miles. As we expected to find no water for the whole of this distance, the India-rubber bags were filled with a small supply. The road struck directly up the bluff, rising quite rapidly at first, then very gradually for twelve miles, when we reached the summit, and a most magnificent view saluted the eye. Before and below us was the North Fork of the Nebraska, winding its way through broken hills and green meadows; behind us the undulating prairie rising gently from the South Fork, over which we had just passed; on our right, the gradual convergence of the two valleys was distinctly perceptible; while immediately at our feet were the heads of Ash Creek, which fell off suddenly into deep precipitous chasms on either side, leaving only a high narrow ridge or back bone, which gradually descended, until, toward its western termination, it fell off precipitately into the bottom of the creek. Here we were obliged, from the steepness of the road, to let the wagons down by ropes, but the labor of a dozen men for a few days would make the descent easy and safe. The bottom of Ash Creek is tolerably well wooded, principally with ash and some dwarf cedars. The bed of the stream was entirely dry, but toward the mouth several springs of delightfully cold and refreshing water were found, altogether the best that has been met with since leaving the Missouri. We encamped at the mouth of the valley, here called Ash Hollow. The traces of the great tide of emigration that had preceded us were plainly visible in remains of camp-fires, in blazed trees covered with innumerable names carved and written on them; but, more than all, in the total absence of all herbage . . . On the slope towards the South Fork the valleys are wide and long with gracefully curved lines, gentle slopes, and broad hollows . . . . Almost immediately after crossing the point of "divide," we strike upon the headwaters of Ash Creek, whence the descent is abrupt and precitous (sic). Immediately at your feet is the principal ravine, with sides four or five hundred feet in depth, clothed with cedar. Into this numerous other ravines run, meeting it at different angles, and so completely cutting up the earth, that scarcely a foot of level ground could be seen. The whole surface consisted of merely narrow ridges dividing the ravines from each other, and running up to so sharp a crest that it would be difficult for anything but a mountain-goat to traverse their summits with impunity. Never before had I seen the wonderful effects of the action of water on a grand scale more strikingly exemplified.¹⁷
   In his return itinerary this traveler observes that, "Ash Hollow has abundance of ash and poplar wood, a small stream in the bottom"; there were "cedars in the hills for camping purposes."¹⁸
   Kelly, who wrote with more literary spirit than any of the others of these travelers, was yet possessed of a degree of English surliness which, however, the charms of the Hollow overcame entirely for the nonce, and he dropped deep into poetry:

    Two more moderate descents brought us into a lovely wooded dell, so watered and sheltered that vegetation of every description appeared as if stimulated by a hot house compared with that on the open prairie. The modest wild rose, foregetting its coyness in the leafy arbours, opened out its velvet bosom, adding its fragrant bouquet to that of the various scented flowers and shrubs that formed the underwood of the majestic ash-trees, which confer a name upon the spot, producing a perfectly aromatic atmosphere. Cool streams, filtered through the adjoining hills, prattled about, until they merged their murmurs in a translucent pond, reposing in the center of a verdant meadow, a perfect parterre, the bespangled carpet of which looked the congenial area for the games and gambols for the light-tripping beings of fairy-land.¹⁹

   But three years before Bryant saw only these prosy commonplaces: "We descended into the valley of the North fork of the Platte, through a pass known as 'Ash Hollow.' This name is derived from a few scattering ashtrees in the dry ravine, through which we wind our way to the river bottom. There is but one steep or difficult place for wagons in the pass. I saw wild currants and gooseberries near the mouth of Ash Hollow. There is here also a spring of pure cold water." Bryant found a small log cabin, near the month of the Hollow, which had been erected during the last winter by some trappers on their way to the East. This cabin had been turned by the

emigrants into a sort of voluntary general postoffice. Many advertisements in manuscript were posted on the walls outside. These included descriptions of lost horses, cattle, etc.; and inside, in a recess, there were a large number of letters addressed to persons in every part of the world, with requests that those who passed would convey them to the nearest postoffice in the states. "The place had something of an air of a cross roads settlement, and we lingered around it some time, reading the advertisements and looking over the letters."²⁰
   The reader will be inclined to credit Bryant's description with orthodoxy in the knowledge that the susceptible Englishman was also thrown into a fit of esthetic hysteria at the sight of a party of Sioux squaws whom he had seen a few days before

    The women were extremely beautiful, with finely-chiselled features, dark lustrous eyes, raven locks and pearly teeth, which they disclosed in gracious smiles that lit up their lovely faces with a most bewitching radiance. They wore no head dress; their luxuriant tresses, divided with the most scrupulous accuracy flowing in unconfined freedom over their shoulders. Their attire consisted of a tanned buckskin bodice, not over tight, . . . to which was appended a short full skirt of the same material which did not reach the knees. The legs were concealed by close leathern hose which revealed the most exquisite symmetry, embroidered on the sides with beads, meeting above the taper ankles a laced moccasin, worked up the instep in the same manner; and over all was thrown with a most graceful negligence, a blanket of snowy whiteness, so arranged as to form a hood in an instant. They also wore large ear drops and had the fingers up to the joints covered with rings. There was one dear girl amongst the group that I was fairly smitten with, to whom I presented a small looking-glass, taking leave to kiss the tips of her delicate fingers as she graciously accepted it, at which she smiled, as if understanding silent but expressive mode of admiration; and taking off a ring caught hold of my hand to put it on; an operation I playfully protracted by cramping my fingers, that I might prolong the pleasure of contact with so charming a creature.²¹

   Court House Rock. The next notable landmark on the trail was Court House Rock, which Stansbury describes as "two bald elevations -- to which the voyageurs, most of whom are originally from St. Louis, had given this name, from a fancied resemblance to a well known structure in-their own city." It was some distance south of the road and the river. ²²
   When Samuel Parker, the missionary, passed Court House Rock in 1835, traveling on the opposite, or north side of the river, it was evidently without a name that was at all familiar, for he spoke of it as "a great natural curiosity, which, for the sake of a name, I shall call the old castle." Its situation was on a plain some miles distant from any elevated land, and by his estimate covered more than an acre of ground and was more than fifty feet high. It is tolerably certain from his description that this curiosity was what Bryant, in 1846, knew and described as Court House Rock. This traveler went a distance, which he estimated at seven miles from the trail, toward the rock without reaching it, and it appeared to him to be from three hundred to five hundred feet in height and about a mile in circumference .²³
   Parker describes the remarkable formations in this neighborhood in general:

    We passed many uncommonly interesting bluffs composed of indurated clay; many of them very high, with perpendicular sides, and of almost every imaginable form. Some appeared like strong fortifications with high citadels, some like stately edifices with lofty towers. I had never before seen anything like them of clay formation. And what adds to their beauty is that the clay of which they are composed is nearly white. Such is the smoothness and whiteness of the perpendicular sides and offset, and such the regularity of their straight and curved lines, that one can hardly believe that they are not the work of art .²⁴

   At the time of Palmer's trip in 1845, however, the rock was called Solitary Tower, and that traveler tells us that it was "a stupendous pile of sand and clay, so cemented as to resemble stone but which crumbles away at the slightest touch." According to this

author it was situated about seven miles from the river, and was six hundred to eight hundred feet above the level of the stream. A stream of water ran along the northeast side some twenty rods from the rock.
   Kelly, we may surmise, was still too much possessed with the charms of the Sioux squaws to have any eye for this inanimate object; and he dismisses the tradition that the rock was named "from its supposed resemblance to a large public building of that description," with the remark that "there was nothing about it of that striking character to seduce me from my path so far aside to visit it." Its location, according to this traveler, was six miles from the river.²⁵
   Captain Bonneville describes the next wonder of this mountain region of Nebraska thus: "It is called the Chimney. The lower part is a conical mound, rising out of the naked plain; from the summit shoots up a shaft or column, about 120 feet in height, from which it derives its name . . . It is a compound of indurated clay, with alternate layers of red and white sandstone, and may be seen at a distance upwards of 30 miles." According to this authority the total height of this formation was then one hundred and seventy-five yards.²⁶ Frémont records that, "It consists of marl and earthy limestone and the weather is rapidly diminishing its height, which is now not more than 200 feet above the river. Travelers who visited it some years since placed its height at upwards of five hundred feet."²⁷ It looked to him from a distance of about thirty miles like the long chimney of a steam

Engraving front photograph by John Wright, Staff Artist.

COURT HOUSE ROCK AND JAIL SHOWING GULLIES LEADING TO BASE

factory establishment or a shot tower in Baltimore.
   Palmer describes it as "a sharp-pointed rock of much the same material of the solitary tower standing at the base of the bluff an four or five miles from the road." As Stansbury saw it, this Nebraska wonder "consists of a conical elevation of about 100 feet high, its sides forming an angle of about 45 degrees with the horizon; from the apex rises a nearly circular and perpendicular shaft of clay, now from thirty- five to forty feet in height."²⁸ This author here remarks that young pines were taking the place of red cedars, the latter dying off. This is in accordance with the

Engraving from photograph by John Wright, Staff Artist.

CHIMNEY ROCK

In November, 1904, members of the editorial staff of this History made an examination of the picturesque part of the Oregon trail in Nebraska -- between Ash Hollow and Scotts Bluff -- and took the photograph here reproduced. Chimney Rock, a land-mark easily seen thirty miles distant, is two and one-half miles south of Bayard. The area of its dome-like base is upwards of forty acres. Drawings by the early travelers including Frémont, represent the Chimney as cylindrical. It is in fact rectangular, like the chimney of a modern house. Court House Rock--engraving on opposite page--is about five miles south of Bridgeport. Pumpkin Seed creek, a clear and rapidly flowing stream, about two yards wide, runs close to the southern and western base, which rises abruptly from the level valley, then doubles back about sixty yards, thus enclosing a section of an ellipse. The jail, so called from its association with the Court House, is about forty yards east of the latter, and its eastern front is a remarkably symmetrical circular tower. Labyrinthine water courses have been cut through the base of these rocks which cover upwards of eighty acres. Toward the creek they are from twenty to thirty feet in depth, and the rushing waters have smoothed their walls almost to a polish. These remarkable elevations were formed by the action of water cutting away the less durable contiguous rock. The material of which they are composed is somewhat harder, and lighter in color than the clay-banks along the Missouri river. Letters cut in them fifty years ago remain unimpaired, and it does not appear that they have been much diminished in height during that time. Buffalo grass grows up to the beginning of the steep sides.

present tendency of the pine growth to extend from that part of the state eastward, as observed by our botanists. Parker observes that, "It has been called the Chimney; but I should say it ought to be called Beacon Hill, from its resemblance to what was Beacon Hill in Boston." He found the base of the rock three miles from the river. "This Beacon Hill has a conical formed base of about half a mile in circumference, and one hundred and fifty feet in height, and above this is a perpendicular column, twelve feet square, and eighty feet in height; making the whole height about two hundred and thirty feet. We left our horses at the base, and ascended to the perpendicular. It is formed of indurated clay or marl, and in some parts is petrified. It is of a light chocolate or rufous colour, in some parts white. Near the top were some handsome stalactites, at which my assistant shot, and broke off some pieces of which I have taken a small specimen."²⁹

   Kelly is a sceptic in his view of Chimney Rock also:

   To my eye, there is not a single lineament in its outline to warrant the christening. The Wellington testimonial in the Phoenix Park, elevated on a Danish fort, would give a much more correct idea of its configuration, though not of its proportions. It is, I should say, 500 feet high, composed of soft red sandstone, standing out from the adjoining cliffs, not so much the result of a violent spasm of nature, as of the wearing and wasting effects of the watery storms that prevail in those forlorn regions. It appears to be fast chipping and crumbling away, and I have no doubt that, ere half a century elapses, Troja fuit will apply to the Chimney Rock.³⁰

   Bryant places Chimney Rock three miles from the Platte river, and says that it is several hundred feet in height from base to apex and can be seen in a clear atmosphere at a distance of forty miles. "The column which represents the chimney will soon crumble away and disappear entirely. The scenery to the right of the rock as we face it from the river is singularly picturesque and interesting. There are four high elevations of architectural configuration, one of which would represent a distant view of the ruins of the Athenian Acropolis; another, the crumbling remains of an Egyptian temple; a third, a Mexican pyramid; the fourth, the mausoleum of one of the Titans. In the background the bluffs arc worn into such figures as to represent ranges of castles and palaces."³¹
   Scotts Bluff. Captain Bonneville observed that Scotts Bluff was composed of indurated clay, with alternate layers of red and white sandstone, and might be seen at a: distance of upwards of thirty miles; and Irving calls attention to "the high and beetling cliffs of indurated clay and sandstone bearing the semblance of towers, castles, churches, and fortified cities."
   Palmer found a good spring and abundance of wood and grass at Scotts Bluff. Parker describes these bluffs as "the termination of a high range of land running from south to north. They are very near the river, high and abrupt, and what is worthy of notice, there is a pass through the range a short distance back from the river, the width of a common road with perpendicular sides two or three hundred feet high. It appears as though a part of the bluffs had been cut off, and moved a few rods to the north." ³²
   Kelly relates that his party cried out, "Mount Ararat; Mount Ararat, at last!" at first sight of the bluff. "As we got on the elevated ground we could see that the bluffs took a, curve like the tail of a shepherd's crook; a prominent eminence forming the curl at the end. This is called Scotts Bluff, from the body of an enterprising trapper of that name being found upon it." ³³
   Stansbury records that "these bluffs are about five miles south of the river. The road up the bluffs steep, but on good, hard, gravelly ground. A small spring at the top of the first hill." ³⁴
   One Robidoux had a trading post and blacksmith's shop there; and when the smith was not inclined to work he rented the shop at seventy-five cents an hour to emigrants who

   Scotts Bluff, the most imposing in appearance of all the elevations in the Platte valley, is three miles south of the town of that name and two miles west of Gering. The upper and next to the lower pictures show the Bluff, the Tower, and Mitchell's Pass, the route of the Oregon trail between them, looking west from Gering. The upper picture on the right was taken at midnight by the light of the moon, after an exposure of an hour and a half (photo by H. A. Mark). To the left of it is the Tower alone. The second picture from the top is a view of the Bluff from the east side, an irrigation canal in the foreground. At the bottom is the bridge at Camp Clarke, built in 1876, for the Black Hills traffic, by Henry T. Clarke with the aid of other enterprising citizens of Omaha, leading freighters, and the Union Pacific railroad company.