Kevin – Friday. Yes, it’s Friday the 13th. If you think we’re going to bike on a highway today, you’re sadly mistaken. Instead, by popular vote, we all sleep in late until about 7 AM after yesterday’s very busy day. I’m up first, taking time to work on blog posts. Everyone eventually rolls out and we have breakfast out on the picnic table under the lone cottonwood tree. The wind hasn’t picked up … yet.
At 10, it’s a 15-minute drive back to Independence Rock and do the touristy thing, walking all around the base (2 miles). We check out the historic names etched into the rock. Denny has a request for a photo from atop the rock, so Mark and I head up. It really is an easy climb. No bouldering or ropes required if you take the route up the east side where there’s a fairly gentle slope. The view is pretty impressive in all directions.
Up on top, there are a lot of patches on the granite Independence Rock that are polished smooth. Such sections were often used by people putting their names into the rock. Here’s one patch but no name.
How does a mountain get polished smooth you ask? Examining the area of Independence Rock, it seems glacial scouring has been responsible. During the last ice age there were some small glaciers in the area – maybe even large ones. As the glaciers slowly flowed downhill, along their bottoms they picked up sand and rocks and carried them along, which, by friction ground and polished any high spots on Independence Rock. My further guess is that the glacier was moving from west towards the east as there is more sediment and large boulders piled up on the eastern side of the Rock.
And the flowers! It’s springtime in the Rockies and there’s been enough snow and water to provide for a glorious bloom this spring. Thanks to Google Images, we were able to identify this purple Bitterroot, an edible, nutritious plant according to WIKI.
After finishing at the Rock, we drove over to the top of Rattlesnake Pass, the old highway route and the route of the Oregon-California-Mormon-Pony Express Trails. Becky is today’s driver and the rest of us (the Three Musketeer’s?) saddle up and bike downhill through the pass to Devil's Gate - Mormon Handcart Visitor Center.
The rest of the morning and into the mid-afternoon, we spend at the Center talking to the people serving as Historic Sites missionaries. They tell the story of the Sun family that settled the valley back in the 1870’s. Over the pioneer emigration period (1830-1869), it’s documented that over 500,000 persons passed through this valley on their way to somewhere. The Latter-Day Saints accounted for some 70,000 of that total number. And, of those, some 3,000 were handcart pioneers. The tragedy and heroism of the Willie and Martin Handcart Companies of 1856 loom large in the tales told at Martin’s Cove. Becky did some quick genealogy and found she and Mark had three ancestors in the Rescue groups.
Every time Denny and I have stopped at the Center, we’ve been in a hurry, so we’d not seen the reconstructed ‘fort’ Seminoe. It was an abandoned trading post that offered temporary shelter for some of the handcarters during that brutal storm in 1856. It was also the place the handcarter’s supplies and personal items were stashed until the next May. Twenty men volunteered to stay and protect the cache. Their stories are also compelling. John Reshaw (or Richards) the man who invited the Mississippi Saints to winter at el pueblo in 1846 enters the 1856 story by sending food to the men remaining with the cache. That food helped keep them from starving. Reshaw is one of the unsung heroes of the Mormon frontier story.
