Continuing North!

Heading North through Nevada we stumbled on Schellbourne Nevada. Schellbourne was one of the fast and furious stops where Pony Express riders changed horses during the 18-month period in which the Pony Express achieved timeless fame. While the structures have long blown away, the trail that the Pony Express riders is still visible.

While the Pony Express as a business model only lasted 18 months, it was replaced by stage coach lines that essentially used the same trails to get from East to West. Long after the end of the era of the Wells Fargo stagecoaches, the visionary Carl Fisher (GM’s body by Fisher fame) dreamed of a paved highway that would allow folk to travel at their own pace, a luxury not allowed by rail. His vision resulted in the Lincoln Highway, which was the first paved highway to connect New York with Sacramento. Interestingly, it followed the old Pony Express route.

We were able to score visits to two National Monuments that we had never been to before. In Idaho we visited Hagerman Fossil Bed National Monument. This area had been a tropical rain forest about 3.5 million years ago. The valley now known as the Snake River Valley was lush with vegetation and animal life. Volcanic mud flows created from eruptions of nearby volcanoes trapped dense fields of fossils, that began to be discovered in the 1700’s.

We learned a lot about the area and its inhabitants. Mostly now extinct, the area literally teemed with both plants and animals. I was fascinated to learn that cancer may not be just a manmade phenomenon caused by our polluting the environment. This 3.5-million-year-old beaver vertebra apparently shows clear signs of bone cancer – who’d a thunk it!

Further North in Washington we hit John Day Fossil Bed National Monument, outside the small town of Dayville. The fossils here are much older than at Hagerman – in the range of 5 million to 45 million years old. However, the story is similar. Rich, lush tropical rain forests covered the area, complete with dense plant and animal life, much like in the Snake River Valley. 

Today you would have no idea what this area was like back then. The upheaval of high mountain ranges to the West have eliminated the epoch old 100 inches of rain that this area would have received, now choking rainfall down to under 10 inches on average per year. The combination of volcanic eruptions and desert conditions result in what we see today – still beautiful, but harsh rather than lush.

Talk to you soon!