Appendix I 



to venture forth onto the unclaimed waterless prairie. The 

 railroads and land companies encouraged homesteaders to 

 take up these vacant lands. Railroad expansion in Wyoming 

 had been quite slow after the building of the Union Pacific 

 through the southern portion of the Territory in 1867-1868. 

 Portions of the Oregon Trail and its variations were used by 

 the Oregon Shortline in 1882. This branch was built from the 

 Union Pacific mainline northwesterly from Granger and 

 followed the old Hams Fork Cutoff through present-day 

 Kemmerer and the main Oregon Trail from Fort Bridger along 

 the Bear River to Soda Springs and beyond to connect the 

 Union Pacific with Oregon rail lines. 



"Although contemporary newspaper accounts long 

 envisioned a rail line over South Pass to service the Sweetwater 

 mines and upper Green River Valley, such a line was never 

 built. Except for early 20th century rail lines built east of Casper, 

 most of the Oregon Trial was never used as a right-of-way 

 for railroads despite its long and proven history of travel. 



"The small farmer had ventured onto the dry plains of eastern 

 Wyoming. However, dry years in 1889 and 1890, and finally 

 a severe drought in 1894 spelled the end of the wet cycle. 

 Coupled with the nationwide Financial Panic of 1893, 

 thousands of homesteaders were forced to abandon their 

 homesteads and retreat from the dry plains. 



"The height of the Dry Land farming boom occurred in 

 Wyoming after 1900 and represented a renewed assault on 

 the unclaimed public lands on the dry plains. This phenomena 

 was encouraged by the State Board of Immigration and 

 Agriculture as well as the railroads which were in the process 

 of building lines into eastern and northcentral Wyoming. The 

 1909 Homestead Act increased the amount of land a settler 



could file upon to 320 acres and offered further encouragement 

 to emigrate to Wyoming. Along the eastern Oregon Trail 

 corridor, the North Platte project resulted in the building of 

 the Pathfinder Dam which was completed in 1910. It actually 

 flooded a substantial segment of the Oregon Trail east of 

 Independence Rock. Two canals were constructed on either 

 side of the North Platte River eastward into the Nebraska 

 Panhandle. Millions of acres of land fell under irrigation and 

 were planted with sugar beets, seed potatoes, alfalfa, and wheat 

 farming techniques for growing cash crops proved 

 unsuccessful over an extended period. Those farmers who 

 managed to combat periodic droughts throughout the teens 

 and 1920s were finally defeated by the Dust Bowl and Great 

 Depression of the 1930s. With the exception of the irrigated 

 lands along the North Platte River southeast of Douglas, the 

 majority of the land in and near the Oregon Trail corridor 

 in Wyoming was returned to large scale livestock grazing 

 ranches by the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 and Depression 

 Era resettlement programs. 



"Settlement of the Oregon Trail corridor was an uneven 

 process, spread out over a number of decades. It remained 

 a viable avenue of travel long after the completion of the 

 transcontinental railroad for those who could not afford 

 railroad or stage fares, for eastern and western trail drives, 

 and for regional and local travel extending into the 20th 

 century. Historian Mary Hurlburt Scott sites numerous 

 examples of covered wagon traffic on the various cutoffs west 

 of South Pass in the post-1880 era and as late as 1912. East 

 of South Pass, large segments of the trial corridor were settled 

 by ranchers and farmers by 1890. East of Casper, many trail 

 segments were used by railroads or placed under cultivation 

 and irrigation by 1920, and major communities such as Casper, 

 Douglas, Glenrock, and Torrington had grown up over the 

 trail." 



51 



