The Kansas City Star from Kansas City, Missouri • 16

Sunday May 23 1993 The Kansas City Star A-17 tell you about the trail When you think things are tough when you get a little depressed go out and walk on the trail And pretty soon thinking back to what those folks who came along it and what they went through you realize things aren't so bad after all Paul Scherbel Marbleton Wyo MOST CAR FOR THE MONEY! DOWN NO SECURITY NO HIDDEN CHARGES FREE SERVICE LOANERS GAP INSURANCE INCLUDED FREE INTERIOR EXTERIOR PROTECTION PACKAGE JUST 36 payments of MSRP 16675 go flying and you miss the ruts And what was happening to them was tractors and car tracks crossing them And I asked myself 'Could we preserve So I wrote some letters And things happened Estaline Carpenter Fairbury Neb MSRP 27635 A A Will Not Be Undersold 7727 Frontage Road 648-5888 (1-35 and 77th St) PRECISION ACURA 1500 DN Close-End Lease with option to purchase Tags Title Taxes Extra A BIGGEST SUIT SALE! MARK BLACKWELL The Star Keeping track of the trail Find Interstate 25 take it to Casper then turn southwest on Wyoming 220 (The most spectacular ruts by the way are found at Guernsey in Wyoming which is the best Oregon Trail state Because of its scant rain and small population find few of the farm plows or city development that has virtually wiped out much of the Santa Fe Trail) Wyoming 220 follows the trail southwest past famous Independence Rock then at Muddy Gap runs into US 287 (Here pass an oddity: a modern-day ghost town Jeffery City caused by the oil bust a few years ago) Near Lander the road turns southwest on Wyoming 28 and passes over the Continental Divide at South Pass a crossing that took emigrants the other side of the Wyoming 28 eventually joins US 30 again and heads into Idaho up the scenic Bear River Valley US 30 joins Interstate 1 5 south of Pocatello At Pocatello 1-15 joins Interstate 86 west which quickly turns into Interstate 84 Those roads are mostly shadowed by US 30 If you want to take the south side of the Snake River with better results than the Utter family we hope jump off onto Idaho 78 near Three Island Crossing actually Ferry And on those four-lane roads the traveler can follow the trail down the Snake River Valley up the Burnt River and over the Blue Mountains of western Oregon The interstate will take you along the Columbia River although Route 30 will give you a better feeling for what the emigrants saw At The Dalles Route 35 to Government Camp and then west on US 26 gives you a good feeling for the Barlow Road It takes the weary traveler right into Oregon City The National Parks Service publishes an excellent Oregon Trail map of highways Believe it or not a good part of the Oregon Trail is interstate highway now Makes sense Those old emigrants dumb They took the easiest way So have highway engineers And a century ago so did the railroad builders Long stretches of the trail in Oregon Idaho and Nebraska are in sight of railroad tracks Following the trail in 1993 hard The trail is marked on most maps And more and more little brown-and-white roadside signs tell you on the trail or close by Those signs incidentally are provided by the National Park Service Oddly said Elaine McNabney a trail enthusiast only a few of those signs are in Missouri the so-called mother of trails Around here the first bits of trail include Lexington Avenue near the National Frontier Trails Center 524 Osage in Independence and Blue Ridge Boulevard Westport Road and Womall Road in Kansas City West on 151st to US 169 south to 167th then west to Gardner Lawrence then take old US 40 toTopkea US 24 west out of Topeka is the Oregon Trail At Wamego turn north on Kansas 99 to Frankfort then west to US 77 then north to the Nebraska line forget Alcove Spring recently opened to the public) In southeast Nebraska the trail is tough to follow East-west roads conspire against a northwest-to southeast trail Work north to Kearney and Interstate 80 Take 1-80 or the parallel US 30 to Ogallala where the Oregon Trail is now closely followed by US 26 That road will get you to Mitchell Pass and Ro-bidoux Pass at Scotts Bluff and on up to Fort Laramie (Each is a ANNUAL ANNIVERSARY SUIT SELL-A-THON SUITS Grueling trail bore gritty images Road without the diaries intend to write a book in the first place but then I got a small grant and went to California and found all kinds of diaries They brought the trail alive In them you not only get a more accurate picture of what route the trail took and where the campsites were but you also find out what the people were feeling what their emotions were Great Platte River Road I got a bigger grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and went all over the country visiting 50 repositories and corresponding with another 50 I ended up with 2000 diaries One of the things those diaries allowed me to do was to prove that far more people than thought traveled on the north side of the Platte River That may seem just a little thing but it was important to The words of emigrants BEST SUIT VALUE THE TOP OF THE LINE THE 100 WOOL GOLD MEDAL COLLECTION ALWAYS! Only 100 wool suits from the loading marartacturers become MEDAL' uAf Always: FREE a 1 0ff s8k Be ot your choice wlh your "GOLD MEDAL" su Always: FREE Helmm riterafions on your MB3AL aft after your MV "Peftect Guarantee' charge Always: FREE a one rear warrarty with your "GOLD MEDAL sul THIS ANNIVERSARY DOORBUSTER SPECIALS MENS DRESS SHIRTS 100 SILK DESIGNER TIES MENS BELTS ons had created a 3- to 4-foot-deep groove the width of a wagon in the soft porous limestone south of the North Platte River The Kenricks she is a native of Germany he of Great Britain were flabbergasted a hard Kenrick said Here and there the words exist on smaller pieces of stone like the one in a ranch kitchen near La Barge Wyo a thin sheet of sandstone marked with Wright The marker just off the Oregon rail and 1 7 miles east of the ranch will be restored to its site around the Little Colorado Desert said Karen Buck Rennells Only a few dozen such markers exist across more than 2000 miles And where the emigrants cut their names in a happier mood are scarce too Look for their mark at Chimney Rock Register Cliff Independence Rock and Register Rock And at Alcove Spring These words are few but like the diaries they tell volumes Continued from A-6 passing through the toll gates on the Barlow road section of the trail show Missourians were the most common Again paper More paper in the form of 1850 census records led Unruh to another fascinating fact: In 1850 25 percent of all Oregon residents said been bom in Missouri And within that 25 percent 75 percent of those were dependents What that meant said Unruh was that people bom in other states ended up in Missouri had children then took off for Oregon classic frontier Unruh wrote Fiddle-footed Historian Merrill Mattes who compiled the Platte River Road Narratives believes in the diaries written only infrequently tend to lump the experiences of many weeks together and recollections are of limited value since the passage of time obscures Values to $2250 All Leather Snakes Values to $25 Special Group Values to $2250 Special iroup 9-8 Mon-Sat 12-5 Sunday.