![]() ![]() ![]() Pike met with the Republican Pawnees in the summer of 1806 on the Republican River between Guide Rock and Red Cloud which is just south of Adams County and with his small band convinced them to lower the Spanish flag in favor of the United States flag. A large Spanish expedition intended to stop both, but the Spaniards were too late for Lewis and Clark and too early for Pike. ![]() Louis) with orders to find the sources of the Arkansas and the Red. Zebulon Pike headed west from Bellefontaine (just north of St. Louis in the summer and fall of 1806, Lt. Thus ended the dream of a Northwest Passage accessed by the Missouri and the search for a transcontinental route continued.Īs Captains Lewis and Clark hurried down the Missouri to a celebratory homecoming in St. Months into the journey (August 12, 1805) Lewis stood atop Lemhi Pass on the Montana/Idaho border where he had hoped to gaze west to a grassy plain bisected by the gentle Columbia rolling down to the Pacific and forlornly viewed and described range after range of snowcapped mountains. Jefferson presented Meriwether Lewis with orders to find the Northwest Passage via the Missouri River and with pages of questions about the tribes. He well understood that the rivers "knew" the way and he sent military parties up the great rivers in search of routes across this greatly expanded "empire." For the most part, they followed Indian trails along the valleys and divides and in many cases they received substantial aid from the tribes. President Jefferson Orders the Military ExplorersĮven the far sighted and well read Jefferson poorly understood the vastness and the potential of the newly purchased Louisiana Territory. The first Euro-whites - the explorers and the mountain men - joined this horse culture golden age and rode the Indian trails up the Little Blue and Thirty-Two Mile Creek to the broad and braided Platte termed the "Coast of Nebraska" by John Charles Fremont. Scott Momaday, who has spoken at Hastings College on at least two occasions, describes the early 19 th century as the flowering of the of the horse culture on the Great Plains. The Pulitzer prize winning Kiowa writer, N. They must have known every spring, stream bend, pool, fishing hole, plum thicket, and buffalo wallow in the Little Blue watershed. The Pawnee hunters and scouts traveled on foot and then on horse along the gentle valleys and over the smooth divides of Adams County for hunting and trading. It was also the smoothest because it followed the natural drainage systems of the Kansas, Little Blue, Thirty-Two Mile Creek, Platte, North Platte, and Sweetwater in order to reach the easiest crossing of the Continental Divide at South Pass. ![]() The original Oregon Trail, America's first interstate highway, crossed Adams County because it was on the most direct route between the bend of the Missouri River at Independence and South Pass at the southern end of the Wind River Mountains in southwestern Wyoming. This is about the time it took the plodding ox teams to pull the wagons diagonally across Adams County from near the Little Blue River in the southeast to the "Lone Grave" in the northwest at the overlook of the Platte River, a distance of approximately 30 miles. Today one can travel from Independence, Missouri, on the Interstate system at 75 mph, 600 miles per day and arrive at the Willamette Valley in Oregon or the Central Valley in California in three days. Will Locke This email address is being protected from spambots. Send comments, suggestions, questions to Dr. THE OREGON-CALIFORNIA TRAIL IN ADAMS COUNTY: HISTORICAL OVERVIEW ![]()
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