Walking in wagon ruts

Guests filling the seats at the historical presentation, "Stage Trails and Ruts" on Saturday included several faces not regularly in attendance, as many ranching families came in for this discourse that visited close to home.

These oft times still-visible ruts that travel from Cheyenne along different routes as far north as Sundance to pinnacle at Deadwood, SD were used between 1875 and 1880 and are part of a harsh time in the history of the Black Hills.

MBA researcher and speaker Rick Kaan of Hot Springs, South Dakota began his oration with a little known fact about those ruts, "The trails were probably made by the freight wagons, but the stage coach is much more romantic so we call them stage coach trails."

Kaan shared many other little known facts about the timeline of events within that five years, from the promises made and broken with the native landowners along the North Platte River to the misinformation moving hundreds of thousands of unemployed immigrants off the east coast to the "over created" gold rushes including the one declared on behalf of General George Custer as his engineers and geologist actually searched for gold in the Black Hills area.

Each of these seemingly separate events are related and planned, according to the researcher, and pertinent to the stage routes in question.

Like the previous story of the Texas Trail presented by Kaan earlier in the year, this one shared the complexities of cause: "The number one reason the stage coaches came to this area and went where they went was for mail contracts [and] they made a lot of money hauling gold," and effect, which included Indian skirmishes and road agents, "until the military could come in and clean it out", thus conquering the land.

Many other details were discussed and Kaan invited questions and comments before closing the discourse and visiting for a while afterward.

The event was hosted by West Texas Trail Museum (WTTM) and the audience appreciated another in-depth look at not only how, but why the hoof prints and stage tracks run through the pasture or under the modern asphalt roads, bringing color, life and tears to another part of the history of Crook County families today.

WTTM director Cindy Mosteller tentatively plans to invite Kaan to present "How longhorns came to the United States" in the spring.