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Show High Time By FLORENCE BITTNER It looks so wet out there, shimmering in sun and so flat and easy. One day's easy ox team ride-two at the most, with the possibility of a dry camp. But the salt flats proved to be the final straw t hat broke the Donner party's timetable and left theni stranded in the snows of the Sierra's early winter. THE LESSONS they learned from the Hastings Cutoff were re men hered by the thousands of westering pioneers, but at some point, the barren thirsty stretch had to be crossed. What the Donner party thought would be the easy one or two day crossing proved to be the greatest endurance test; the most feared section of all the trek from the Missouri Mis-souri to California. We don't know how far it is. We sit in our air conditioned cars and listen to music and munch potato chips and sip a soft drink and discuss the last speed tnai at the Bonneville salts flats, but we don't know how far it is or how thirsty or how deadly. WEST AND a little north of Wendover, a high cone shaped peak is called "Pilot Peak" and for obvious reasons. As the oxen plodded their parched march across the yielding sands of the salt desert, the men and women kept their eyes on that peak. Another day or maybe two, and if we ration the water to the beasts, give a little to children and just enough for the grtrvn-ups to keep soul in body, maybe we ll make it. FROM IH45 to 1850 Pilot Peak was the landmark the California bound trekkers watched for. after 70 miles of heat and thirst and deadly sameness. Seventy miles. On a good day you coild make 15 miles, but you cant push the beasts too hard, and there's not one spot of shade; not one moment of relief from the relentless sun. That shimmer which looked like water-that's water-that's brine so thick it will eat the soles right off your feet and make oxen and horses lame. John C. Fremont named Pilot Peak on his expedition in 1845 when Kit Carson who was serving as guide for his party was sent ahead to look for water. He found a line of springs at the base of the peaks. KNOWN AS McKellan Springs, they are on the east side of the peak and were worth more than all the gold in the mountains of California. Califor-nia. Without those springs, the trek to California would have to have been made way north through the Oregon trail or way south, and the south route meant crossing the Mojave desert and the north route mectnt going a hundred miles out of the way. DURING THE years of the gold rush, parties stationed at Pilot Peak by the springs went out into that emptiness to the east periodically with water for the relief of the heat and thirst crazed wagon trains. We watch Wagon Train and Bonanza and think of those westering folk as having the comforts of life, but there wert' few comforts for those who made the continent crossing. Most walked because the animals could only pull so many punds, and every pound counted. A woman and a child weighed as much as a barrel of water. Grain to feed the animals had to be earned for those and stretches where there was no forage. People could survive, but if the animals died, the people also perished, so the animals were cared for first. MEN WALKED beside their oxen, guiding them with spoken commands or with wooden prods. Put your shoulder to the wheel was not an idle jest. When the going was too tough for the animals, the people helped push the Children walked if they were old enough, which meant over about six years old. Sometimes they strayed or got tired and sat down and the train went on. No count was kept of the number who hadn't the physical stamina to complete the journey, but the death loll was in the thousands. BY THE time they reached the salt desert, they had survived sur-vived the great plains, the rocky mountains and still had ahead of them the great em-tiness em-tiness of Nevada with its Humboldt River which meanders and then disappears disap-pears into the great sink. But the worst part of all was the salt desert. Four or five days of sun and heat and yielding sand and thirst with the salt sucking all the moisture mois-ture till your very skin cried out for water. PILOT PEAK was a beacon; a milestone; an accomplishment. ac-complishment. For those who made it that far, it was proof that they had endured the worst. They knew how far it is. We ride in ease on the trail they built, which is forgiveable, but the worst is that we have forgotten how dearly they bought our ease. |