June 26, 2023
Two places visited today, The Stuhr Pioneer Museum in Grand Island, Nebraska and the Fort Kearny Historical Site in Kearney, Nebraska. I’ll start with the Stuhr Museum: There was not much there regarding the Oregon Trail, even though it came through the area. This is a living history museum, and it was mostly about the transcontinental train travel era. They have an 1890’s village with a working blacksmith shop and a main street with shops. They did have a static display of several items inside a larger building. They also had buffalo on site and Joel did say in the book that they encountered buffalo on the trail, but it was not until later in the journey, not this early. At this point in the journey the company of wagons had swelled to 35 (safety in numbers) and they were now following the Platte River through what is now Nebraska. Joel called the Platte a mile wide and a foot deep. In the book Joel states that they camped near Grand Island along the Platte. They began the trip in late March, and it was now early May. They were traveling 10 to 20 miles a day. Grand Island is called that because there is a very large land mass that splits the river, and then it comes back together downstream. Joel states in the book that the island “is said to extend eighty or ninety miles down the river”. The museum has a couple of representations of Native American dwellings: a tipi and a Mandan lodge. Joel states in the book that the natives mostly stayed away from the band of travelers because of the loaded shotguns that the men carried. He also relates that there were some friendly encounters and trading as well.
The Fort Kearny Historical site didn’t have much more to offer, but it was interesting, nonetheless. I was told by a local that this is pronounced CAR-nee. There was a representation of a stockade (built recently), and some posts in the ground representing where other buildings stood, such as the soldier’s quarters, and the parade grounds with a replica of the flagpole that stood in the center. Joel only mentions Fort Kearny once (spelled Kerney in the book), and that is because there was a boy that fell from a wagon and his legs were run over by one of the wheels, breaking one leg and badly bruising the other. They had to send for a government doctor at Fort Kerney (Kearny). The boy survived. In the photos, you can see how little room there was for a family’s possessions. Few people rode in the prairie schooners, usually only the drivers of the oxen teams. Most everybody walked the journey. 10 to 20 miles a day. Nobody was fat.
Following The Oregon Trail: Day Two
