goldfields

Several times people have asked me, “How did John Bidwell know how far they had traveled each day? How did they measure the miles?” It’s a good question and I can only guess at the answer, but here goes—

Attempts to measure distance traveled go back a long way. The ancient Romans did it. So did the Chinese. A simple way to measure distance is to tie a rag or ribbon to a wheel and have somebody count the number of revolutions. Multiply that by the circumference of the wheel and you have the distance traveled.

That is not a job I would want, but Julius Caesar would have made a soldier or a slave do the counting.

Benjamin Franklin (of course! who else?) invented an odometer when he was postmaster general in order to calculate the distance between major cities. According to How Stuff Works, it was a geared device that clicked over a mile for every 400 revolutions of the wheel of his carriage. The Franklin Institute has such an odometer in its collection.

William Clayton, a convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and a Mormon pioneer, developed an improved odometer, which he called a roadometer, in 1847. According the the National Park Service,

Just 10 days and 75 miles out of Winter Quarters, William Clayton recorded in his journal: I walked this afternoon in company with Orson Pratt and suggested to him the idea of fixing a set of wooden cog wheels to the hub of a wagon wheel in such order as to tell the exact number of miles we travel each day. He seemed to agree with me that it could be easily done at a trifling expense. In this fashion the odometer, called the roadometer, was invented in 1847 by the Mormon pioneers crossing the plains from Missouri.

The National Park service article on Clayton’s odometer has a diagram, in case you want to build your own. The use of this device enabled Clayton to give accurate information to future emigrants in his The Latter-day Saints’ Emigrants’ Guide.

But Clayton made his device in 1847, and Bidwell was on the trail in 1841. Did he and his companions have some kind of odometer, or were they estimating? That’s the question.

Bidwell never mentions having an odometer, and neither do any of the other members of the party. At least three members of the Bidwell-Bartleson Party kept daily journals: Bidwell, James John, and Nicholas Dawson. It is interesting to note that their records of mileage do not always agree. For instance, on July 4th, Bidwell writes that they traveled 22 miles. Jimmy John has 16 miles, and “Cheyenne” Dawson has 20.

I suspect they were estimating the distance, based on hours of travel, the speed (very slow) of oxen, the nature of the terrain, etc.

If I ever get a chance to meet John Bidwell, I’ll ask him that question!

Monday, 5th. The hills continued to increase in height. After travelling 16 miles we encamped at a noted place called Independence Rock. This is a huge isolated rock covering an area, perhaps half a square mile, and rising in shape of an irregular obtuse mound to the height of 100 feet.

Father DeSmet wondered how the feature acquired such a “pompous name,” and thought it might be because of its isolated situation. But he was told that:

It was called so because the first travellers who thought of giving it a name, arrived at it on the very day when the people of the United States celebrate the anniversary of their emancipation from Great Britain.

As Bidwell wrote:

It took its name from the celebration of the 4th of July at this place by Capt. Wm. Sublette, and it now bears many names of the early travellers to these regions.

Sublette, fur trapper and mountain man, gave the rock its name in 1830, as he led 81 men and 10 wagons to the Wind River to hunt for furs and trade with the Indians. It became, as Father DeSmet called it, the “Great Register of the Desert,” as countless trappers, traders, emigrants, and missionaries carved or painted their names on the rock.

Today you can visit Independence Rock, walk the path around its base, even climb on it. (Watch out for mosquitoes–Wyoming mosquitoes are big and mean and I got the bites to prove it.) Hunt for names—the earliest I spotted was from 1890, but a careful search should turn up earlier ones. Many pioneers carved their names on the rock, but others only painted them with tar or grease, and those names have faded away.

Saturday, 3rd. Left the N. fork; a distance of 12 miles took us to a spring of cool, though unpleasantly tasted water. The day was intensely warm, and road mountainous; killed four buffalo and two deer.

The Company is still relying on bison for meat, but at least they aren’t killing eight or ten a day like they did earlier in the trip. They must have realized what a waste that was. Bidwell in particular was bothered by the evidence of wholesale slaughter he saw about him, and predicted that, “If they continue to decrease in the same ratio that they have for the past 15 or 20 years, they will ere long become totally extinct.”

During the 1820s and ’30s they were mainly slaughtered to harvest their hides for buffalo robes. The meat was left to rot, much to the dismay of men like Bidwell, who rightly feared their extinction. This continued until there were only about 500 American bison left. At last in 1884 Congress ordered the Army to protect the wild buffalo at Yellowstone National Park from poachers and their numbers began to recover. It was a near thing.

Monday, 28th. Passed an immense quarry of beautiful white alabaster; 3 buffalo killed, distance traveled 18 miles, encamped on a little rivulet affording as good water as ever run.

On the same day, James John wrote in his journal:

Took dinner on the bank of a creek of good water and good grass. Near there is a large cliff was white as snow, a little harder than common chalk and some of the earth is composed of a substance, supposed by the Company to be plaster of Paris.

Alabaster is a form of gypsum and is indeed used in making plaster of Paris.

Father De Smet wrote about the alabaster quarry.

We discovered a curious quarry, which, at first, we took for white marble, but we soon found it something more valuable. Astonished at the facility with which we could fashion this kind of stone into any shape, most of the travellers made calumets of it. I had several made myself, with the intention of offering them as presents to the Indians, so that for the space of forty-eight hours our camp was filled with lapidaries. But the great number of these calumets could not withstand the action of the fire, and broke. It was alabaster.

The dictionary definition of alabaster at Lexico.com says it is a “fine-grained, translucent form of gypsum, typically white, often carved into ornaments.” Its relative softness makes it easy to carve.

A calumet is a ceremonical pipe used by Native Americans. Here’s a picture of one carved out of salmon alabaster.