Trail Dust Newsletter of the Oregon-California Trails Association, Idaho Chapter Vol. XXXI Issue 1 Nancy Briggs, Editor, Mar 2019 Contents Calendar for 2019 1 Message from the President 2 May Activities 2 IOCTA Program for May Meeting 4 The Idaho Wild West 5 OCTA Spring Board Meeting & Symposium 6 Proposal for a new IOCTA Committee 8 Diaries Across Idaho 9 Calendar for 2019 Feb March Boise Community Education Classes March 15 th 16 th, - OCTA Symposium in Independence, MO April 27 th Spring Byway Tour May 9 10 th Searching for History in City of Rocks May 11 th am - Spring Chapter Meeting in Burley May 11 th pm - Visit to Caldron Linn with Jim Hardee August Jeffreys/Goodale Cutoff at Carey September 3rd 7 th - Annual Convention in Santa Fe NM. October 5 th Fall Meeting and visit to the Oregon Trail Recreation Area 1 P a g e
Message from The President By Jerry Eichhorst A relatively mild winter in the Boise area is fading away as spring arrives. That of course, can only mean one thing: it is time to get out on the trails. The Boise Community Education classes in February and March were another success. Over 35 different people attended at least one of the three classes, with several attending all of the classes. Most participants seemed to enjoy the classes. Several have promised to join OCTA and the Idaho chapter. I hope they do and become active members. The annual spring byway tour will be held on Saturday, April 27. About twenty people have signed up for the tour so it should be a good group. If you have not yet been on this tour, I encourage you to do so. We ll visit Oregon Trail sites from Mountain Home to Boise including sites that are not generally accessible due to being on private property. Our first chapter activities, including the spring chapter meeting, will be in early May in southern Idaho. Details may be found in another story of this edition of the Trail Dust or on the chapter website, www.idahoocta.org. Activities for the rest of the year have not yet been finalized. If you have an outing in mind or something you would like to see, please let me know. We have a number of members who have yet to come to a chapter activity. I encourage you to come out and participate. The chapter has a lot of great, friendly people and everyone is welcome to join us. There is no cost and it is a great way to meet new friends and learn about the emigrant trails. See you on the trails. May Activities By Jerry Eichhorst The first chapter activities of the year will be conducted at City of Rocks in southern Idaho. On Thursday, May 9, we will meet at the City of Rocks Visitor Center at noon and then head through the park to search for the lost Kelton Road stage station on private property south of the park in Emigrant Canyon. Our initial search last year did not determine the location. A follow-up visit I made in August as the last leg of the Hensley Cutoff post-convention tour eliminated another possibility Old photo of the Stage Station from Emigrant Trails of Southern Idaho. Photo by Larry Jones. 2 P a g e
After studying maps and the one picture of the stage station, I have determined another location which needs to be searched. BLM Photo of the old City of Rocks Stage Station. Note the very faint Twin Sisters in the background, above the two figures on the right, and particularly the perspective the photo gives of them. The following day, Friday, May 10, we will again meet at the City of Rocks Visitor Center, but at 9:00 in the morning. We will be going into the Reserve to do metal detecting under the direction of the COR Archaeologist at two camping areas for California Trail emigrants. We will be doing a formal search with grids laid out and locations of artifacts carefully noted by the archaeologist. Finally, on Saturday, May 11, the spring chapter meeting will be held at Perkins Restaurant in Burley, Idaho (see page 4). After a short business meeting, Jim Hardee, noted fur trapper and explorer historian, will talk about the Hunt expedition and early explorers in southern Idaho. Shoshone-Bannock tribal member Leo Ariwite will also talk about the meaning of what is carved on Map Rock south of Nampa. After lunch, we will have an outing to Caldron Linn, west of Burley. Be sure to mark your calendars. Details may be found on the chapter website, www.idahoocta.org. 3 P a g e
Spring Meeting Program for May 11 th, Burley Leo Ariwite Map Rock In the fourth Issue of Trail dust for 2018 we wrote an article about Map Rock. Leo Ariwite from Fort Hall noted the article and offered to speak to us about it. Leo is the Language & Cultural Preservation Liaison at Fort Hall and in this role provides for tribal educational projects. He serves as the intermediary between the Tribes, non- Indians and tourism development in the states of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. Map Rock is just one petroglyph in the area of the Guffey Butte Black Butte Archeological District. Map Rock is believed to have been created by the Shoshone Bannock hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. Leo will speak to us about this large panel of petroglyphs. The large basalt rock sits on Map Rock Road in Canyon County, 7.3 miles from the junction with Highway 45. A little further east is Celebration Park where many more petroglyphs can be found. Jim Hardee Caldron Linn Jim is the author of the award-winning publication Obstinate Hope: The Western Expeditions of Nathaniel J. Wyeth, Volumes 1 & 2, and Pierre s Hole: The Fur Trade History of Teton Valley, Idaho. He is also editor of the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Journal, published by the Sublette County Historical Society. He will be speaking to us about the Wilson Price Hunt Party and will lead a tour to Caldron Linn in the afternoon of the 11 th. Caldron Linn, also known as Star Falls, is at a point where the Snake River Canyon narrows to just 40 feet across. It was here that the Wilson Price Hunt Overland party, making their way cross-country to Astoria, lost Antoine Clappine and gave up on floating the Snake. They split up. One result was that members of this Overland group were probably the first European Americans to visit the Treasure Valley Petroglyphs at Celebration Park He (Mr. Crooks) called out but his warning voice was either unheard or unheeded. In the next moment they struck upon the rock. The canoe was split and overturned.. Astoria, Washington Irving, 1836 4 P a g e
The Idaho Wild West By Dan Dunne and Russ Smerz One of the biggest benefits of belonging to IOCTA is that we receive notice of activities that are presented by other Idaho Historical Organizations. In the past we have, for example, attended Lewis and Clark Society presentations. Recently IOCTA notified members that the Owyhee County Historical Society and Museum in Murphy, Idaho was hosting a free seminar on the subject of Idaho's Wild West. The Idaho Wild West program included: Joe Hickey who displayed and discussed his extensive collection of rifles and pistols from 1860-1900. These 60 or so weapons are in mint condition. He had stories and interesting facts about most weapons. We were allowed to pick up and examine any weapon we wanted. Bob Sobba who presented the story of David Updyke, the rogue, and we do mean rogue, Sheriff of Ada County in the 1860's. He was later hanged by Payette Vigilantes! One of the items that was not on the agenda was the Fort Boise Garrison (FBG). This is a reenactment group that does accurate period dress presentations. There were three soldiers, one trapper and one woman that were dressed in the 1850's - 1870's clothing. They brought along a mannequin and showed how to dress it in the proper clothing of that period. Bill Betenson, the great nephew of Butch Cassidy, made a presentation of this well-known outlaw and western character. Hint, he does not believe that Butch died in South America but returned to the American West. You can find him and his Uncle, on Face Book. The Wild West History Association is an organization much like OCTA that does field and historical research. Find them at www.wildwesthistory.org. The day concluded with a tour of the Owyhee County Museum. It is a very nice museum and well worth a trip to Murphy, Idaho. The museum staff was excited to display OCTA information, since the Southern Alternate Oregon Trail passed very close to the museum. Anytime you have a chance to go to any historical gathering, this is fertile ground as we are all interested in our history. I believe we recruited several members that day. 5 P a g e
OCTA Spring Symposium in Independence Truman & the Trails By John Briggs Being used to the wide-open spaces of Idaho it was of great interest for me to see how Trails are managed in an urban environment, and especially at the kicking off point for the Trails in the Independence area. At the Spring Symposium we had the opportunity to take two tours. Independence Route Tour The Tour started at the National Frontier Trails Museum. First stop was at the Upper Independence Landing, the connection to the town of Liberty (est. 1821) on the north bank of the Missouri River. Independence itself, some three miles south of the Landing, was founded in 1827 and was the main outfitting point for the Santa Fe Trail in the 1830s. It continued to grow with the migration of the pioneers to Oregon and California in the 1840s. By the 1850s it had been supplanted by the Westport Landing which we were to visit the next day. when the road was originally built it called for tree stumps to be no more than eight inches high. Wagons can pass over such stumps! This square was where the outfitting needs of the Pioneers were met. We went on to see the Oregon Trail and DAR Santa Fe Trail markers at the Courthouse, together with many reminders of the fact that this was Harry Truman s home both before and after his time as President. Still on the ridge between the Little Blue and Big Blue Rivers, we stopped to see the swales at Wieduwilt Park, the 2016 Powder Mill pedestrian bridge which carries the route of the trails across I-435, the Hickman Mills sculptures (above) and descended to the (difficult) Big Blue River Crossing at Red Bridge. We crossed to see the swales at Minor Park. In the photo above, taken at the landing, Ross Marshall explains the history of the crossing. The camera man is from PBS who is preparing a program about the Trails. We travelled on City Streets, built on the Trail, past the Truman home to Independence Square. This had been platted by Bartleson in 1826 being high ground but with excellent water supply from springs. An interesting feature for us was that The photo above is of the Minor Park swales and the DAR marker. Red Bridge can just be made out in the trees behind.. 6 P a g e
Westport Route Tour From the host hotel we made our way west to Kansas City. The Westport Landing (Kansas) lies at the foot of Main and Grand Streets in a gully leading up to the bluff. This landing had the advantage of being west of the Big Blue River (avoiding that crossing) and one mile from the border between the USA and Indian Territory. We were able to take a pedestrian bridge over the cut all the way out to the fast-flowing Missouri River s edge! A little further west we stopped at Clark s Point, which Clark thought to be a good site for a fort when stopping here on the return journey in 1806.. The statue is of Lewis, Clark, York, Sacajawea with baby Jean Baptiste and Seaman the dog. Kaw Point, where the expedition stopped in June of 1804, on the way out, is clearly visible from here. It is at the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers and the farthest south point of the River Missouri in western Missouri State thus a logical jumping off point for the Santa Fe Trail and for the later Oregon and California Trails. In 1838 this settlement was known as the town of Kansas becoming Kansas City officially in 1889. The Trail ran down Main Street until 1838, when farmer McGee built a fence across it and diverted the Trail down Grand Street! John C McCoy founded Westport and was one of the founders of Kansas City. He is remembered in a sculpture at Pioneer Park. The other two men shown below are Jim Bridger, the mountain man who lived here in his later years, and Alexander Majors an early freighter. Kansas was established as Indian Territory with the 1830 Indian Removal Act, which called for all tribes in the Eastern US to move west of the Missouri border. Non-Indians were not allowed to live west of this border. There were no towns west of here and so Westport became the last place to outfit and the jumping off point for the Trails. It was here, too, that Thomas Johnson established the Methodist Mission to the Shawnee Indians which was our next stop. In 1854 Kansas was opened up for settlement and Lawrence was founded. A cut-off that ran from Westport to Lawrence shortened the distance to the Oregon-California Trail. This, the California Road, passed through current day Shawnee. Pioneer Crossing Park in Shawnee celebrates this road and the nearby Military Roads.. We returned to the National Historic Trails Museum via Sapling Grove, the rendezvous point for Bidwell Bartleson, and Strang Parks. 7
Proposal for a New IOCTA Committee By Jerry Eichhorst A couple of areas which I think the Idaho chapter could improve upon is our support for our chapter membership and publicity for chapter activities. I believe that the two are closely related as both involve focused communication and involvement of the membership. Therefore, I would like to propose the creation of a new chapter standing committee called the Membership and Publicity Committee. This committee will focus on giving attention to our membership and activities. I believe that this committee can be a great means to continue to grow the Idaho chapter membership, get inactive members involved with the chapter, and continue the involvement of active members. We will discuss this proposal at the Spring Meeting in Burley, Idaho. Membership and Publicity Committee Purpose: Encourage and support chapter members to participate in chapter activities and continue their membership in the chapter Publicize chapter activities through social media and other means Produce the Trail Dust chapter newsletter Coordinate chapter activities with the chapter website administrator for updating the chapter website Coordinate chapter activities with national OCTA for updating the national website Monitor and respond to membership updates provided by national OCTA Coordinate members with chapter projects and activities if they are looking for more involvement Proposed Members John Briggs, Chairman Dan Dunne Nancy Briggs, Trail Dust editor Jerry Eichhorst, chapter website administrator Other chapter members who desire to help Suggested Tasks to Consider Recruit and coordinate committee members Determine process for welcoming new members Determine process for working with lapsing members Determine process for developing and maintaining a chapter social media presence Determine process for publicizing chapter activities through existing media activity sites Other tasks as determined by the committee Membership Attributes Members of this committee are approved by the chapter Board of Directors and serve with no time limit The committee chairman is designated by the chapter Board of Directors 8
Diaries Across Idaho Portneuf River Valley By Jerry Eichhorst The original Oregon Trail route traveled from Sheep Rock in a westerly direction across the valley before turning north and following the Portneuf River upstream. After a better route following the east side of the valley was blazed in 1846, the route traveled northwest from Ivins Springs twelve miles northwest across the valley until it reached the Portneuf River. The route then turned north to follow the river upstream for six miles before turning to the west to climb over the mountains. The Portneuf River was the first water the emigrants reached which flowed into the waters of the Columbia River the Portneuf would flow south, then west through a gap in the mountains, before reversing course and flowing northwest into the Snake River below Fort Hall. The river route was impassable for wagon travel. We turned off from the Bear River and struck over on to the waters of Snake River, Next morning we started down one of its branches, but found that we could not get along with the wagons. We therefore turned back again and stayed near where we encamped the night before. The next day we continued on up [upstream to the north], and fell over on Snake River Joseph Williams 1841 Mon. [September] 11. Rain, hail, and a northwest wind all day. We struck a stream called Port Neuf and followed it all day. It runs south towards Bear River. Traded a horse from one of the Shoshonees we met on the road. Theodore Talbot 1843 Sunday 8 made 17 miles & encamped on Portnuff a Stream haveing Some Curiosity about its heading in the mountain deviding Bear & Snake Rivirs and taking a Southern course into the vally of Bear River it turns short into the mount[ain] James Clyman 1844 July 27 th. Day clear. Morning cold. Wind in the vallies very changeable. Nooned on a creek nearly dry which runs into the Port- Neuf. Made about 14 miles and encamped on the P. N. about one mile and a half from the crossings. Wind W. July 28 th. Day clear. Crossed the P. Neuf, which is one of the head waters of the Snake River. This is the first of the Pacific waters we came to on our rout passing through Oregon. The grass through this region, which is already cured is preferred by the cattle to greener grass of the creek bottoms. Carlos W. Shane 1846 [August] 4 Wednesday We make 15 miles and camp at the Portneuf, a small river which we shall cross tomorrow a mile from here. It empties its water into the Snake River. During the night ice freezes and every day we see snow on the top of the mountains at our left. Rt. Rev. Augustine Magloire Alexander Blanchet 1847 July the 24 we are preparing to march for the next camp we came 6 mills and came to portnaff creek here was A great many traders and Indians campt to trade with the Emegrants this tributary runs in to snake river and snake in to the Collumbia river Absolom Harden 1847 9
Idaho Chapter OCTA 2908 Whitehaven Place Eagle, ID 83616 IOCTA Officers and Directors Jerry Eichhorst President jeichhotrails@gmail.com Don Wind VP - East donjoanie1@gmail.com John Briggs VP - West johnxbriggs@msn.com Dan Dunne Treasurer ltcdunne@gmail.com Paul Dinwiddie Secretary pdiny@msn.com Virgel Clark Historian bobc012001@yahoo.com Don Wind Preservation - East donjoanie1@gmail.com Wally Meyer Preservation - West wallywanch@q.com Nancy Briggs TD Editor nancylbriggs@msn.com Jerry Eichhorst Webmaster www.idahoocta.org Dave & Donna Newberry Director donteach@juno.com Lyle Lambert Director Lyle.lambert@yahoo.com Bill Wilson Director runofthemillbill@gmail.com Jim & Dawn Fazio Director jfazio@turbonet.com Lynn and Margie Houdyshell Director houdyshell@cableone.net Visit IOCTA online at www.idahoocta.org