(Not Really) Roughing it on the Mark Twain Trail
From Hannibal, Missouri, to San Francisco, California
By: Johnny D. Boggs 11/01/2007
Overland Days
Twain’s journey west followed much of the Pony Express Trail. Another grand spot is the circa 1859, stone Pony Express Barn in Marysville, Kansas, now a museum on Eighth Street. Near Fairbury, Nebraska, there’s Rock Creek Station. Twain didn’t make Rock Creek famous; the credit for that goes to James Butler Hickok. In 1861, “Wild Bill” began his gunfighting career, leaving David McCanles dead. Today,
the old station is a well-preserved, underrated state historical site.
Let’s rough it across Nebraska through Kearney and North Platte, and into Colorado to, as Twain reports, the “‘Crossing of the South Platte,’ alias ‘Julesburg,’ alias ‘Overland City,’ four hundred and seventy miles from St. Joseph—the strangest, quaintest, funniest frontier town that our untraveled eyes had ever stared at and been astonished with.”
Maybe that was the case in 1861. Today, I doubt if many travelers see more than the Colorado Welcome Center off Interstate 76, where visitors are greeted by that legendary Pony Express rider. Okay, it’s not a real guy, but Brenda Jean Daniher’s life-sized bronze statue, God Speed to the Boy and the Pony, certainly celebrates Twain’s words from Roughing It:
“‘HERE HE COMES!’ Every neck is stretched further, and every eye strained wider. Away across the endless dead level of the prairie a black speck appears against the sky, and it is plain that it moves. Well, I should think so! In a second or two it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling, rising and falling—sweeping toward us nearer and nearer—growing more and more distinct, more and more sharply defined—nearer and still nearer, and the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly to the ear —another instant a whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck, a wave of the rider’s hand, but no reply, and man and horse burst past our excited faces, and go winging away like a belated fragment of a storm!”
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