Overview
Title: Overland Trail, Travel in Colorado, Fort Collins, Denver
Topic(s): travel, tourism, environment, Northern Colorado history, environmental changes, migration, military
Theme/Focus: Change over time
Location(s): Rocky Mountain National Park, Denver, Rocky Mountains, Northern Colorado, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, Garden of the Gods, Fort Casper
Essential/Inquiry Question(s): How did the Overland Trail help Colorado develop? What were the hardships people faced when traveling? How did the Overland Trail change over time?
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Author
Morgan Peters
Historical Context/Background
The Overland Trail was a critical route in the westward expansion of the United States. Stretching from western Kansas to Salt Lake City, the trail passed through parts of modern-day Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. In its early days, the trail was primarily used by people traveling west to reach Salt Lake City and California, as well as mining settlements in the Rockies during the Colorado Gold Rush.The Overland Trail was developed with heavy emphasis as a stagecoach mail line, serving the Overland Stage Company owned by Ben Holladay and later Wells Fargo.
This route was valued heavily by mail coaches and travelers for two reasons. One, it avoided the more congested trails like the Oregon Trail to the north and the Santa Fe Trail to the south. It also ventured around more heavily mountainous areas, making travel less dangerous.
In Colorado, an offshoot of the Overland Trail ran through what would later be known as the Front Range, the significantly settled area between Fort Collins and Denver. Fort Laramie, located in present-day Wyoming, was a major military outpost along the Overland Trail, providing military protection to settlers from Native Americans, with which relations worsened significantly in this period.
The completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869 altered the usage and significance of overland stagecoach trails. By the late 1870s and early 1880s, railroad networks were becoming a more reliable, safer, and luxurious form of transport, and the development of tourism to the region began to grow. By the early 20th century, stagecoach travel was essentially dead. The explosion of the automobile industry and its promise of individualized travel led to the growth of road networks and highway systems, which largely replaced railroad travel in the Western United States. However, large portions of early highway networks in Colorado and Wyoming, like the Lincoln Highway and I-80, were heavily based on the Overland Trail route.
Today, remnants of the Overland Trail persist. Cities in Northern Colorado and Southern Wyoming like Fort Collins, Laramie, and Cheyenne owe their founding and early development to their location along the Overland Trail. The Overland Trail is commemorated at places like the Fort Laramie National Historic Site and the Malchow Farm.
Resources
Railway Scenery Sketches
Scenery of the Pacific Railways and Colorado, 1878
Description: Pencil drawings of several locations in northern Colorado in 1878, including Denver, Long’s Peak, Lily Lake, the Flatiron Mountain range, Boulder, Gray’s Peak, and Green Lake. Illustrations by John D. Woodward.
Possible Inquiry Questions:
- Who was the intended audience for these drawings? What did the author want the person seeing these drawings to feel?
- How was the image of the American West (or of Colorado) being presented at this time?
- What human impact is shown or not shown in these drawings?
Significance: The narrative presented in the work is of a train journey from Kansas City to California via Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah. This is a travel narrative that provides an early view of how cross-continental rail travel was experienced, the routes taken, and the cities visited by passengers on early cross-continental travels. The drawings complement the written descriptions of the views described by the narrative and add visual components to help market the scenery visited by the railroads. The source provides a visual way to teach how the American West was portrayed in art that was being marketed to people on the East Coast of America in order to encourage travel and emigration to the West via the railroads that had been newly constructed.
Rideing, William Henry. Scenery of the Pacific Railways, and Colorado (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1878).
Rambles on Overland Trails
Description: Photographs of two locations in Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs. Thomas O’Shaughnessy was a traveler who published his account of traveling on former trails taken by settlers including the Santa Fe Trail and the Overland Trail. He traveled by car for nine weeks. He took several photographs of sites in New Mexico, California, Utah, and Colorado.
Possible Inquiry Questions:
- How do these pictures look different from the drawings from the 1870’s?
- How does this demonstrate how technology improved between the 1800’s and the 1900’s?
Significance: The narrative presented in the work is of an overland car journey in which the author visits Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, California, Utah, Nevada, and Wyoming. This is a travel narrative that provides an early view of how cross-continental travel was evolving away from the rail system and how a cross-country road system was evolving. The photographs highlight the development of personal photography technology. The sources provide a visual way to show how the American West was photographed by tourists and experienced by early generations of car-traveling Americans. It shows how wagon trails like the Overland Trail were repurposed into roads in the 20th century.
O’Shaughnessy, T.J. Hosie. Rambles on Overland Trails. (Chicago, R. R. Donnelley & Sons. 1915.)
Overland Trail Wagon Ruts
Description: A color photo of wagon trail ruts near Signature Rock at Roberts Ranch in Fort Collins, Colorado.
Possible Inquiry Questions:
- What was the physical impact that travelers left on the land?
- How many people would have had to use the trail in order to leave these marks for so many years afterward?
- Do you think it’s important to leave these trails as they are? Why or why not?
Significance: This is direct physical impact of the Overland Trail and its route near Fort Collins. This shows the impact of travel in the past and the number of people who used the trail.
Malchow Farm Gravesite
Description: A gravesite for an anonymous “traveler” along the Overland Trail, located at the Malchow Farm in Berthoud, Colorado. Longs Peak can be seen in the background.
Possible Inquiry Questions:
- Why do you think it is important to remember people who died while trying to reach somewhere new?
- Do you think this grave needs improvements?
Significance: This source is significant because it demonstrates an often-overlooked part of Westward migration: that many people did not make it. This is important because it allows us to learn about how people remembered friends and family they lost.
