Three from the Road #22 – 2010 trip¹

Originally established as a private fur trading fort in 1834, Fort Laramie evolved into the largest and best known military post on the Northern Plains before its abandonment in 1890.  The original post, named Fort William by its founders, Robert Campbell and William Sublette, was rectangular and small – just 100 by 80 feet – the palisade formed by cottonwood logs, hewn 15 feet high. In 1841, rivalry with a competing fort led the owners to replace Fort William with a larger, adobe walled structure they named Fort John. The U.S. Army purchased Fort John in 1949 as a part of a plan to establish a military presence along the emigrant trails and, on June 26, the post was officially renamed Fort Laramie, beginning a half century tenure as a military fort. “As the years went by, the post continued to grow in size and importance. Fort Laramie soon became the principal military outpost on the Northern Plains. Fort Laramie also became the primary hub for transportation and communication through the central Rocky Mountain region as emigrant trails, stage lines, the Pony Express, and the transcontinental telegraph all passed through the post.”²

From 1890 when the Army hauled down the flag for the last time until 1938 when the Federal Government reclaimed the place as a National Monument, a span of almost a half-century, Fort Laramie slept in the sun, dreaming of faded glory. Although a few perceptive individuals recognized its lingering historic value, and many visited it out of curiosity, its status during this period was that of a country village, not altogether deserted but looking rather forlorn, like a tornado-ravaged community which never bothered to rebuild.

The desolation was the result of the wholesale demolition of buildings that occurred in 1890 and the decade following. This is not to condemn those responsible because in the 1890s there was a scarcity of local lumber for construction and there was no thought, in or out of Government, of reserving Fort Laramie for future park purposes. Indeed, it would be 25 years before anyone of record would suggest publicly that the few buildings remaining should be preserved for posterity.³

Our visit to Fort Laramie on July 9, 2010, was late in the day after stopping at several other places.  We were tired and didn’t spend as much time looking through the fort as we would have liked to – and we still were an hour away from where we planned to stop.

Endnotes

1. Three from the Road is a series sharing images from places we’ve visited.  Initially, each post included thee images, related by a randomly selected location or topic. Posts now may be random choices or pre-planned sequences.  This post is in a series sequentially sharing images from our 2010 trip west.
2. Fort Laramie: Crossroads of a Nation Moving West – National Park Service
3. Fort Laramie as Country Village and Historic Ruin – Park History, 1834-1977, National Park Service, page 40 of 266,

References

• National Park Service
• Wikipedia
• CyArk
• WyoHistory.org
• LDS

September 2007
Music: “When it Rains” by Anna Coogan and North19 track
added using YouTube AudioSwap

While in Montana in September 2007, we had plans to stop in Lewistown to get set up with a satellite internet system. The installer, Ron, had an extra RV spot at his home for friends, complete with hookups and invited us to stay there for a few days. The satellite system was a new model and there were a few wrinkles in getting it set up right. Ron was a member of an on-line RV forum I participated in. Retired, Ron did satellite system installs for other forum members at one price no matter how long it took. While there, we shared supper with Ron and his wife several times in their house and once at the Black Bull Saloon and Steakhouse in Hobson. We also took in the 2007 Lewistown Chokecherry Festival and the What the Hay “hay art” contest that stretched over 21 miles in Judith Basin County between the towns of Hobson and Windham. As, well they took us on a couple of other drives out into the Montana countryside. “What the Hay” is now also called the “Montana Bale Trail.”

__________

Lewistown, Chokecherry Festival, and Montana Bale Trail information:

• Lewistown Chamber of Commerce
• Lewistown Chokecherry Festival
• Lewistown in Wikipedia
• Montana’s Russell Country
• Bureau of Land Management
• Montana Bale Trail

21^st Century Digital #20

Nelson Atkins Art Museum, Kansas City, Missouri.2009. May 7.

Claes Oldenburg, American (b. Sweden, 1929), Coosje van Bruggen, American (b. The Netherlands, 1942-2009). Shuttlecocks, 1994. Aluminum, fiberglass-reinforced plastic, paint, h x diam: 19 feet 2 9/16 inches x 15 feet 11 7/8 inches. Purchase: acquired through the generosity of the Sosland Family, F94-1/1-4. Donald J. Hall Sculpture Park. (The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art)

A shuttlecock (also called a bird or birdie) is a high-drag projectile used in the sport of badminton. The name is from the Victorian times, when Badminton was first discovered and became popular. It has an open conical shape: the cone is formed from 16 or so overlapping feathers, usually goose or duck, embedded into a rounded cork base. The cork is covered with thin leather. To ensure that shuttlecocks rotate consistently, only feathers from the birds’ left wings are used. The shuttlecock’s shape makes it extremely aerodynamically stable. Regardless of initial orientation, it will turn to fly cork first, and remain in the cork-first orientation. The name ‘shuttlecock’ is frequently shortened to shuttle. The “shuttle” part of the name was probably derived from its back-and-forth motion during the game, resembling the shuttle of a loom; the “cock” part of the name was probably derived from the resemblance of the feathers to those on a cockerel. (Wikipedia)

Highsmith, Carol M, photographer. Photograph retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2010630148/. (Accessed March 03, 2017.)

Medium: 1 photograph : digital, TIFF file, color.

Highsmith, a distinguished and richly published American photographer, has donated her work to the Library of Congress since 1992. Starting in 2002, Highsmith provided scans or photographs she shot digitally with new donations to allow rapid online access throughout the world. Her generosity in dedicating the rights to the American people for copyright free access also makes this Archive a very special visual resource.

Note – This image has been digitally adjusted for one or more of the following:
– fade correction,
– color, contrast, and/or saturation enhancement
– selected spot and/or scratch removal
– cropped for composition and/or to accentuate subject matter
– straighten image

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign #16 |

A mural in Cincinnati that depicts a sign painter in action using “distressed” techniques in which the painter creates the illusion of an old and faded sign, but all at once from scratch on a brand new sign.

Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith, October 18, 2016

An elaborate painted sign, of four completed in three days in 2015 by “lettermen,” as artistic sign painters call themselves, who met for a convention in Cincinnati, Ohio, and stopped by the American Sign Museum in the industrial Camp Washington neighborhood to see the museum and demonstrate their trade. Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, 2016. -10-18. Photograph retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016632971/. (Accessed April 02, 2017.)

Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Purchase; Carol M. Highsmith Photography, Inc.; 2016; (DLC/PP-2016:103-4).
Forms part of the Carol M. Highsmith Archive.

Highsmith, a distinguished and richly published American photographer, has donated her work to the Library of Congress since 1992. Starting in 2002, Highsmith provided scans or photographs she shot digitally with new donations to allow rapid online access throughout the world. Her generosity in dedicating the rights to the American people for copyright free access also makes this Archive a very special visual resource.

Note – This image has been digitally adjusted for one or more of the following:
– fade correction,
– color, contrast, and/or saturation enhancement
– selected spot and/or scratch removal
– cropped for composition and/or to accentuate subject matter
– straighten image

Three from the Road #21 – 2010 trip¹ |

Eagle Rock at Scotts Bluff National Monument, July 9, 2010

Long serving as a landmark for travelers from native peoples to those following the Oregon, California, and Mormon emigrant trails, Scotts Bluff towers 800 feet above the North Platte River. The trails’ route past Scotts Bluff was through Mitchell Pass, a gap through the Scotts Bluff formations, between Eagle Rock and Sentinel Rock. After 1851, this route replaced Robidoux Pass, eliminating an 8 mile swing south.

Travel over the trails continued unabated in the early 1860s, even after the onset of the American Civil War, until early August 1864, when an Indian war erupted that pitted volunteer soldiers against Sioux, Arapaho, and Southern Cheyenne warriors. For several weeks, all traffic and communications on the trails were stopped.  While several military expeditions sought the warring tribes, they failed to bring them into battle. In response, Brigadier General Robert Mitchell established a plan to to fortify each stage station along the Oregon Trail, with troops detailed to them for their defense.  Mitchell also decided to establish two forts at strategic points. One, defending the branch road to Denver, was established near Julesburg, Colorado.  The second, which came to bear the general’s name, was a sod stockade structure established northwest of Scotts Bluff.  The ground plan of Fort Mitchell consisted of a stockade with a sally port, firing loopholes, and a sentinel tower.²

Official records documenting Fort Mitchell’s history are meager, but construction had begun by September 1, 1864, the date General Mitchell visited the site. The general’s aide-de-camp noted that the men of the 11^th Ohio’s Company F were hard at work building the sod structure. Captain Jacob Shuman, the first commander of the as yet unnamed post, gave General Mitchell a tour of the site and described his plans for a sod stockade he hoped to have finished before winter set in. By the end of October, most of the work had been completed and the post was named for the general who had ordered its construction.

Although no physical indications of the post remain, nearby Mitchell Pass preserves the name and serves as a reminder that for three years, Fort Mitchell stood guard along the Oregon Trail during an important period in American history.³

Trail rut remnants in Mitchell Pass, Scotts Bluff National Monument, Nebraska, July 9, 2010

Eagle Rock above Park Buildings, Scotts Bluff National Monument, Nebraska, July 9, 2010

Endnotes

1. 1. Three from the Road is a series sharing images from places we’ve visited.  Initially, each post included thee images, related by a randomly selected location or topic. Posts now may be random choices or pre-planned sequences.  This post is in a series sequentially sharing images from our 2010 trip west.
   2. Wikipedia
   3. Fort Mitchell – National Park Service

Selected photos from a trip in the western U.S. in 2007.  Audio track: Paul Mottram’s “Sidewalk Saunter.”

21^st Century Digital #19

Punalu’u Black Sand Beach on the Big Island, Hawaii. 2005. December 6.

Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Photograph retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/2010630043/. (Accessed March 05, 2017.)

Photograph: Carol M. Highsmith

Medium: 1 photograph : digital, TIFF file, color.

Highsmith, a distinguished and richly published American photographer, has donated her work to the Library of Congress since 1992. Starting in 2002, Highsmith provided scans or photographs she shot digitally with new donations to allow rapid online access throughout the world. Her generosity in dedicating the rights to the American people for copyright free access also makes this Archive a very special visual resource.

Note – This image has been digitally adjusted for one or more of the following:
– fade correction,
– color, contrast, and/or saturation enhancement
– selected spot and/or scratch removal
– cropped for composition and/or to accentuate subject matter
– straighten image

See on Flickr

Punalu’u Beach (Wikipedia)

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign #15

New York City employees picket City Hall
1954 World Telegram photo by Dick DeMarsico.

Teamster Union members holding picket signs supporting higher raises and pensions.

Photograph retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/00652480/. (Accessed April 02, 2017.)

Forms part of: New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection (Library of Congress).

See my Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign video on YouTube!

Note – This image has been digitally adjusted for one or more of the following:
– fade correction,
– color, contrast, and/or saturation enhancement
– selected spot and/or scratch removal
– cropped for composition and/or to accentuate subject matter
– straighten image

While we had been here before, in 2001, we had just been passing through on our way to Glacier National Park and had made reservations at a hotel in Great Falls for one night.

In the images used for this video, though, Great Falls was a 2007 destination for a family visit. A brother, his wife and two sons were living there. While visiting with family, we also saw some of what is left of the falls, went to a farmers’ market, saw an autocross competition, visited Giant Spring State Park, spent a little time at a horse auction and stopped at the Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail Interpretive Center.

__________

References for Great Falls:

• City of Great Falls
• Wikipedia
• Great Falls Chamber of Commerce
• Great Falls Tribune