Don Wildman

Of course, they'd follow rivers.

We didn't even mention the fact that this was largely kicked off in the earliest days of all by Lewis and Clark, you know, whose tales of going up the Missouri and so forth come back and sort of become the fodder for legend and mythology already.

But as they're getting back, they're still following some of those same trails or that general tradition.

lay of the land.

Chimney Rock, a 300-foot tall natural spire would have been there.

Scott's Bluff, perhaps the most famous, marked the end of the prairies, beginning of the Rocky Mountains.

But by the mid-1840s, you had military forts along the way, which had established these outposts to aid travelers.

Fort Laramie, Wyoming, for example.

It really became quite organized that you could sort of measure out your route through these different destinations, right?

What would the average day experience be like?

Slow going for the most part.

Take me through the morning, afternoon and evening of an average wagon trail traveler.

I guess the ultimate bonding experience for all these travelers.

I mean, if they hadn't already gone out together as a group signing on to one of these trains, I'm sure many of these people created communities among themselves by the time they reached their destination.

You mentioned these diaries.

There must be tons of tons of things to read from people going across, right?

Interesting.

Yeah, it's a tremendously dangerous experience as well.

There are a lot of negatives here.

I mean, the disease factor, you had cholera, dysentery, of course, never fun.