Nutmeg Sugar Cookies & Scotts Bluff NM (Day 7)

“Go west, young man, and grow up with the country.” “Manifest Destiny!” These were the rallying cries for emigrants in mid-19th Century America. And go west we did! All thanks to politicians back in the day wheeling and dealing real estate–the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, Texas’ independence and statehood in 1845, drawing the 49th parallel in 1846 to decide Oregon’s boundaries, and California officially opening for business after the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with Mexico.

Between 1800 and 1850, the United States population went from roughly 5 million people to over 23 million. European immigrants and procreating patriots caused those original 13 Colonies and beyond to get a little crowded. Folks, young and old alike, started getting itchy feet to move out of there. Gold’s discovery at Sutter’s Mill in 1848 California just revved up everyone’s wagons more. (1)

In the days before interstate freeways and GPS, a path through the brush or a wagon-rutted road following a hired guide helped folks go from point wherever to California or Oregon. Jumping off points like Independence, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas launched pioneers off into the wild unknowns on trails called the California, Santa Fe, Oregon, and Mormon. (Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis, Missouri is a fabulous location to learn about anything and everybody migrating westward.)

Preparing for a 2,000+ mile road trip, lasting anywhere from five months to a year long, obviously required planning. Pioneers planned for the worst and hoped for the best. Shopping list items included a wagon, oxen or mules, clothing, and hundreds of pounds of supplies like flour, sugar, coffee, salt, bacon and rifles with ammunition. Other items included extra wagon wheels, tools and barrels containing water and tar. Furniture and heftier family heirlooms such as grandfather clocks, trunks and dressers were often packed, and later discarded on the trailsides. Can you imagine shoving everything you own of value and supplies for everyone into your family truckster? Yowsers!

Besides word of mouth, newspapers of the day were a common source of information. Advertisements for supplies such as wagons, mules, clothing, and guide books were plentiful. Letters and accounts from previous travelers frequently offered information about the landscape, wildlife, weather, native peoples, and best routes to take.

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Scotts Bluff’s famous Eagle Rock point (photo below on left), along with nearby Sentinel Rock on the south bluff (photo below on right) is collectively known as Mitchell Pass.

Scott was returning to St. Louis from a fur-trading “rendezvous.” This possibly was the Green River Rendezvous, held near present-day Daniel, Wyoming. Started in 1825 on Wyoming’s Green River, mountain men and Native Americans gathered yearly at the Rendezvous to trade trinkets and furs, gather supplies, share stories to one-up another, social-network, and generally let loose.

Scott’s Bluff (AKA Scotts Bluff) was a landmark travelers gauged their travel itinerary on. Reaching this point meant settlers were about one-third of the way to reaching their destination. The Waze wagon set could expect to “save some distance by land” on a “tolerably good wagon road the whole way to the mountains” through Scotts Bluff and Mitchell Pass (Pittsburg Daily Post, February 6, 1849). From here on out, though, the “troubles commence” with the road becoming “more uneven to Fort Larima” (Laramie).

Road reports of the day told of bumper-to-bumper traffic. For fifty days in Fort Laramie, a total of 7,113 wagons with 31,911 people passed through on the California Trail. It was the largest military outpost in the 1800’s Northern Plains area, bustling with pioneers, soldiers, native peoples, and fur-traders. Talk about a traffic jam! Between 1841 and 1866, roughly 350,000 people traveled through Scotts Bluff to California, Oregon, or beyond. Many more migrated afterwards.

Today’s traveler, like your’s truly, documents every twist and road turn with a force-family-fun picture or selfie attempt. Social media is crammed with pictures of folks posing precariously in front of wild critters, yoga-posing somewhere random, or posting whatever was just eaten. (Again, including your’s truly.) But back in the heyday, mental travel images were just that. Anyone with an artistic hand, or eye, or both, could later document what they witnessed. These acts were often artistically glorified, making reality look much better than it probably was. Hmm…a pioneer version of today’s SnapChat filters?

One of these artists was William Henry Jackson. Jackson was born in 1843 Vermont to parents who encouraged his artistic abilities. His father George was a businessman with an early interest in photography. George’s camera eventually became a toy for the young Jackson. Harriet, his mother, was a talented artist also. She taught her son how to draw and paint before his formal art education at the age of ten. As a teenager, Jackson worked as a photography assistant in New York and Vermont studios. Here he learned how to retouch photographs, as well as shooting and developing them using techniques from the time, like the daguerreotype, calotype, and collodion dry plate. (2)

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In 1862, Jackson enlisted in the Twelfth Vermont Infantry. To pass the time in Union army camps, he frequently sketched camp-life and his army buddies. Jackson never saw combat during the Civil War, but participated in the Gettysburg Campaign with his company. In later life, he would revisit the battlefield for veteran reunions.

After the war, Jackson’s photography experience and reputation grew. For a time he worked at the Vermont Gallery of Art in Burlington. A dispute with his fiance and subsequent move out of the state, however, changed the course of his life and western photography forever. By 1867, Jackson opened a portrait studio in Omaha, Nebraska. At “Jackson Brothers, Photographers,” he took some of the first-ever photos of Native Americans from the Pawnee, Otoe, Omaha, Winnebagoe, Ponca and Osage tribes. These images can be seen here.

Jackson’s photographic prominence awarded him commissions to document the remote American West. In 1870, Jackson was asked by Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden, head of the United States Geological Survey (USGS), to join his survey into Wyoming’s Yellowstone and Teton Mountains. As the official USGS photographer for eight years, Jackson photographed the first iconic images of Yellowstone National Park and surrounding areas.

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Decades before Ansel Adams picked up a camera, William Henry Jackson and his assistant Charles Campbell were packing gear, shooting photos and developing negatives in rugged, remote locations.

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One of Jackson’s classic paintings, “Mitchell Pass,” features Scotts Bluff behind a line bullwhackers driving oxen-powered freight wagons. (A retouched Jackson photograph of Scotts Bluff is also featured below.) In 1866, Jackson traveled the California Trail as a young bullwhacker. He and his travel companions even slept below Eagle Rock one night.

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Other locations from the Old West trails are within driving distance from Scotts Bluff National Monument. Chimney Rock, about 20 miles southeast, is possibly the most iconic trail landmark from this era, rising 325 feet high. Approximately 52 miles to the northwest is Fort Laramie National Historic Site in Wyoming. In its heyday, Fort Laramie was the largest military outpost in the Great Plains. And a few miles further down the road in Guernsey, Wyoming are Oregon Trail Ruts and Register Cliff State Parks. Decades of wagons pushed and pulled up the trail’s higher elevations can be walked on at Oregon Trail Ruts. Some ruts are as deep as five-feet! Register Cliff is a veritable record of so-n-so stopped here, where pioneers camped and carved their name.

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Day 7’s cookie is a Nutmeg Sugar Cookie, a pioneer receipt dating back to my G-Grandma’s childhood in 1890’s Wisconsin. The recipe shared today originally came from G-Grandma’s Aunt Rosa, who was born in 1854. G-Grandma wrote, “they were the best I have eaten, bar none.” (If you like this one, check out G-Grandma’s Creamy Rice Pudding recipe.)

As with any heirloom recipe, a little detective work is involved. The specific amounts of flour and baking temperature/time weren’t specific. But with a little work, the results are moist, full of nutmeg spice, and make a simply good old-fashioned cookie. In keeping with G-Grandma’s recipe, I didn’t frost these cut-out goodies. They’d be even more scrumptious coated with a basic buttercream icing, or powdered sugar ‘n’ milk glaze.

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Tomorrow we’re taking a turn for the South. Deep in the heart of Texas, where waystations on a river fed both physical and spiritual needs! See you soon!

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