Scotts Bluff National Monument &

Chimney Rock National Historic Site

Introduction

Courthouse and Jail Rocks

Chimney Rock NHS

Scott's Bluff NM

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Introduction

The year is 1845. You are travelling West in your oxen drawn wagon, heading for a new life in the frontier. You may have had no future in the East, or you may have even been a successful business man, but felt the need to travel and start a new life.

Your wagon train most likely started in Kansas City. You could have arrived in Kansas City by boat (the Missouri River ran West from the Mississippi, but turns North at Kansas City) or you could have even arrived by train. But either way, the way West was by land.

These rock structures are part of the Wildcat Range, today just oddities of North America's past, when it was a sub-tropical flood plain. But to the pioneers who travelled the Oregon trail, these rocks told them they were on course, and a third of the way to their destination.