Mini Winter Road Trip

I'm taking a break today. I gotta get out and stretch my legs a bit. I've been couped up too much and got to expend some energy. I hate the cold and being inside but I'm getting a good opportunity and clearing in the weather to make a break, a mini road trip just before Christmas. As this post goes up, (I'm loving the automatic timed schedule feature on the page, I can post even while I'm away from the computer!) I should be somewhere in the middle of a desert in Wyoming looking for a ghost town. If I can find it I suspect it'll yield some interesting things as I came armed with a shovel and metal detector. I've done a series of calculations using, map and satellite photo analysis, carefully measured distances, checked coordinates of original Union Pacific track surveyors, and read from historical accounts. This is about half a year in anticipation, I've just have not found a time to make a break on this one until now. I'm looking for a place that existed on a barren stretch of alkaline salt flats. I need to find an old railroad track bed, if you look hard enough you can still find spots of the original transcontinental track bed from the 1860's stretching across the western US along I-80. The place I'm headed to also has a branch of the Mormon Trail running to it. I have to act like a detective and carefully pay attention to my surroundings. It's crazy to try finding this thing but even after 140 plus years, I'm confident in my ability to find at least some trace of something in the location I'm looking. Actually I usually attempt things this crazy because I think others have a hard time believing this place ever existed. For me, the better the hunt is, the less people have discovered and the more there is for me to find if I find it. Odds are stacked against me at least 90% that I won't find a thing but in my gut I'm hoping on that 10% that I'll strike something. I listened to a man last Spring who found stuff from this area, he placed his finds on the counter in front of me. Old artifacts like an ornate Freemasons pin, a 19th century mini ball .68 caliber bullet, and an old coin. To me it's worth taking a stab at at least once. Today I must travel back in time to the 1860's try and put myself in the footsteps of pioneers. The railroad is coming through, old trails parallel and lead off into the barren landscape, local tribes are making their attacks on rail laying crews more frequent as the rails mark a death knell on their way of life and threaten to bring a larger invasion of settlers from east. Today I'm going to the end of track or also known as "Hell On Wheels".

They were way out there. No air conditioned modern automobiles, no paved roads, no convenience stores to stop and get some bottled water at. The United States basically ended back around Iowa & Missouri, this was just a territory. Once you stepped foot west, that was the "Great Desert" though not all desert being out here was really off the beaten path. If only I could travel back in time with an off road modern vehicle modified to burn an available fuel source, some good snacks to packed, a cooler, outdoor gear, some friends and an Ipod with some good tunes It'd be a blast (from the past).

Hard unforgiving work. Back in those days you just went up to a tent and said "I'm ready to do some work, point me in the right direction" and they said "We need some more hands over there, sign on this dotted line please" or "Let me see you swing a hammer, (wha-ching) your hired!" like it was so easy to get work. Sure there were no HR departments but it was pretty honest and straight forward, no messing around with follow up interviews and stupid office politics or work place drama.. and what are they gonna do, outsource ya? Work place hazards: dysentery, cholera, fever, no real safety code, gun fights, drunken brawls, indian raids. Some severance packages came with a noose clause and in place of the contemporary office going away party was what's know as a "neck tie party" rather than write ups there were string ups if the offense was severe enough. Where trees lacked, there was always plenty of sand, ants and turkey vultures. This gives a whole new meaning to somebody saying "I'm fed up with this lousy job, right up to my neck!" - One could find themselves literally up to the neck buried in desert sand on a scorching day with honey doused on their head, an army of ants closing in and the buzzards hovering overhead. Yikes.

Okay I guess that is all a little over dramatic, those things happened but walking away from the railroad and having new guys drift in was common. People came and went in the construction with no precise documentation on the exact numbers. getting neck deep was probably rare unless somebody had done something to really anger somebody.