Even though I grew up in Wyoming, as Did my Mom and her Dad before her - I had never been to Fort Laramie. I grew up in the North-West corner of the State by Yellowstone Park. So when I began researching for my Oregon Trail Novel, from my home here in the Pacific Redwoods, I used a lot of library books and mail order brochures, and as the years passed, Google and facebook.
Facebook has a wonderful page about the Fort Laramie Historic Site at
but still, even though we traveled back to visit family, we never quite made it to the fort, until this July. This time, with my book published, and with having just taught it to a class of 4th and 5th graders, I really wanted to see the place in person. So we found it, kind of between whereby Sister-in-law and my Mother-in-law live and as soon as we got there, the sky opened up and dumped a flood of rain on us.
but we are immune to rain after 30 years in the Pacific Northwest and also appeared to be the only visitors there who didn't own umbrellas, they don't work when you live where the rain comes down sideways.
Anyway, I got to get out and stroll the grounds and grouse the rooms and get in on a "women at the fort" talk. It was fascinating, but I learned it no longer looks much like the walled compound I had read about on that location in 1850. The Fort has changed over the years, but the hail and heat and long miles to get to it remain the same, and when you think of doing those miles on foot or in a wagon, they appear so daunting!
I like to camp, and I guess I could call this fun for maybe a month, but to travel in this for six months? I think I am glad I never had to do that, and yet, I wonder.
To see my Novel about two fifteen year old girls, traveling across North America 152 years apart, but still helping each other, see here Double Time On The Oregon Trail
a bit of the novel where I wrote about the fort follows at the end of this post
Della stopped writing as
a powerful memory hit her. She had been holding the hand of one of
her students as the child jerked and screamed and died. There had
been no time for the family to stop and mourn, but the men had immediately scraped
out a shallow grave, wrapped the small body in a sheet and said a
prayer before covering the grave with stones and more dirt and
leaving it unmarked. All up and down the wagons, small groups were
gathered for similar hurried funerals.
She blinked back tears
and remembered the relief she had felt at reaching Fort Laramie for
her Mother's sake. Dipping her pen once again in the unstoppered ink
bottle, she picked up the writing again,
“People tell me that
the cholera seems to leave people alone once they make it to Fort
Laramie. No one knows what causes it but they
think the water is faster here and the land is higher and someway
that adds protection. Our group is much smaller now than when we
left St. Louis and the Cholera and accidents and weather and people
shooting themselves have caused us to leave too many graves scattered
behind us. The saddest part is that we will never be able to find
the graves again, even if we ever come back this way. To hide the
bodies from the wolves, or to keep them from being dug up for their
clothing, we hid the grave by packing down the dirt and after that
driving wagons across it, and if we had time, even building a
campfire on top.
“I doubted that she
would agree, because Mother thinks that Doctors are all quacks. The
fact that she didn't argue tells me she was
feeling more poorly than she allowed to us. We did get Mother to see
the fort Dr. today, and the man gave her a bottle of tonic which he
says will stimulate her liver and clean her blood and leave her
strong and healthy. He also gave her some Calomel, and told her that
she should stop taking it once she feels her face go numb and she
begins to drool a bit. Then she will know it is working. He said
that after that, if she is still feeling poorly it is safer to switch
to using arsenic to improve her health. He charged Father two
dollars. Then he treated many other members of our group with such
complaints as burns and gunshots and the bloody flux.
“Orville said he must
make a lot of money and the Dr. said he sometimes made as much as
five dollars when he needed to perform an
amputation. Orville said being a Fort Dr. must be a grand way to
become rich and the Dr. did not argue. Later, one of the girls who
lives here told me that the Dr. often treats people for free or for a
bit of trade if he knows they could not pay for him.
“Back East we did not
go to Doctors, The home remedies are better and safer, and for
certain no-one goes to a hospital if they want to live. Many people
decide to hang a shingle and be a Dr. if they can't make money from
another trade. Here on the trail they seem to be better, I think
they see so many people that they get more practice doing the kind of
healing that needs done here. Or maybe the kind of person who cheats
people is too lazy to brave the trail.
“We did get me a new
pen in a leather case, with a few nibs, but I feel guilty for asking
when the prices here are so much higher than in St. Louis.
“Mother says she is
grateful that we have enough bacon, and that our chickens provide
eggs, but we purchase more cornmeal to refill the barrels. Maybe
there was enough to make it to Oregon but it also protects our eggs
and Mother's china, which is packed into the barrels with it.
“Orville begged until
he convinced one of the soldiers to allow him and three of his
friends to climb up on the top of the rooms which are built around
the inside walls. The roofs of these rooms
become a walkway by which means the soldiers can patrol the high
outer wall without making targets of themselves. I was expected to
be more interested in shopping, but I envied the boys ability to
explore that view. It wouldn't have been right for a young lady to
talk so freely with the soldiers and for a moment I wished I were 10
instead of 15, so I could worry less about 'proper.'”
“Della, Blow out that
lantern and come to bed now.” Her Mother's voice interrupted the
flow of her thoughts and Della looked at the burning candle behind
the glass doors of the lantern. Those precious candles must last until Oregon City when they
would finally have time to make more unlike the butter which churned
itself on the trail, candle making could be very time consuming. She
stoppered the ink, put away her journal and blew out the candle.
Then she closed her eyes briefly to allow them to adjust to the
dimmer light and when she opened them again the brilliance of the
stars dancing above her took her smiling into sleep.
I can't remember where I first heard of this book, but I found it on my own Amazon page wish list and had obviously thought about it at one of those times when even a kindle book was outside my price range. But I got an Amazon gift card as a birthday present recently, and right before I went to buy a copy of Two Loves Found, a sequel to a book I had just read by Sandy Graham - I found a copy of that book arriving in my mailbox as an unexpected gift.
So what we have here is a young woman, in 2012 who has recently lost her family in a horrible way, and then finds a letter telling her, that they are not her birth family, but that she was a baby, found on a doorstep, wrapped in a bloody, monogrammed shawl with a ruby brooch that, by the way, transports people and things through time. When she learns this, she understands why her Dad has raised her with a ton of outdoor skills, and taken her on Oregon trail reenactments. She makes her plans to find out who she is, and uses the brooch to place herself at the start of the Oregon Trail in 1852.
I love time travel and the Oregon Trail, which is why I had a girl from 2002 communicating with a girl from 1850 in my novel - and traveling the highways that retrace the trail now it is always fun to compare my swimming pools and air conditioning to their dust and drought and campfires but Ms. Logan has so many different comparisons to think about that I was immediately hooked into her novel and couldn't put it down. It was also interesting to see that even in the ten years between my modern 2002 and her 2012, there were changes such as my girl had a phone card, but her woman had a iPod, mine had printed pictures but hers had a digital camera. I did have to wonder about one thing, I get that she could use a solar charger and charge the iPod, and show saved information on it back in 1852, but I'm wondering how they managed to get hooked in to see you-tube videos?
