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April 25, 2011 We started our day hopeful that the Frontier Trails Library would have a complete copy of our great-great (?) aunt’s diary of her family’s passage from Iowa to California in 1852 along the Oregon Trail and perhaps some more on Capt. Mock (our great uncle’s) travels to California in 1849. We had delayed our travels almost 2 days because of Easter weekend and the town of Independence’s special celebration day on Thursday. We met the librarian shortly after 9:00 and he had a copy of “A Journal of Traveling” by Amanda M. Matthews, which was 28 pages long and nothing more on Capt. Mock.
Here is the first entry from Amanda’s diary: “April the 18th, 1852: This day left brother Simpsons’ in company with brothers’ Ruben and Warren Matthews’ and their families for the far off coast of the PACIFIC. Our company numbering 7 teams. Proceeded as far as PLEASANTVILLE, the distance of about 9 miles.” She follows day by day until September the 9th in California. As her trail and ours intersected it was really fun to have her personal accounts of the various geographic features and happenings along the trail.
We also followed the Cone diary, which mentions encountering Capt. Mock’s group and traveling in conjunction with them for several months. It was very interesting how similar the two diaries were. The main difference was that the Matthews, being further north in origin and 3 years later followed more of the Mormon route west. For a significant part of the trip, that really meant that she was north of the Platte River and the Mock party was south.
The librarian suggested we should visit the “swales” near the library which is evidence of the ruts all of the wagons leaving Independence left behind the mansion across the street. Walking around the short loop path,, the evidence was unclear as it was covered with lovely spring grasses and one could not distinguish between ruts and normal earth. Valerie took several pictures, but we decided that the ruts we saw a few days later were more significant and obvious, so we didn’t include them.
So, with diaries in hand we began our trek. First to the courthouse in Independence, where many of the wagons were outfitted and formed, so we would have an “official” beginning. We suspect, however, our Mock
family outfitted themselves at home, since they lived about a two days drive east of Independence.
We looked at a couple more spots in Independence for swales and ate lunch at one of the parks. We decided that we really didn’t know what we were looking for or it wasn’t the right time of the year. We left Independence around the same time the wagon trains did, and we wondered how well they coped with the spring rains, tornadoes, and heavy winds that we were encountering. We worked our way basically south and west trying to follow the curved trail over the new side roads, city roads, and Interstates. We were never really sure where we were going, but continued in that general direction. We finally turned down a major street that was clearly marked on our AAA map and was mentioned in our USPS Oregon Trail Auto Tour Route book. We still weren’t sure where we were, when we came upon a mega-malls area typical of all new suburban developments. We found our local Wal-mart and picked a sort of level spot for the night. As you can see from the photo we were joined by others.
Regardless of our twisting and turning we made more than the average 20 miles the wagon trains made per day in this section. Still not knowing where we were we asked a clerk in Wal-mart where we were and she told us on this side of the street we were in Missouri and the other side Kansas. We thanked the fact that we had our Tom-Tom, and wondered how the pioneers could so carefully write, “made 12 miles today” and find their way without road signs to guide them.
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