| The diary excerpts below are from the
two-volume book set, Journeys to the Land of Gold: Emigrant Diaries from the Bozeman Trail
1863 - 1866, edited by Susan Badger Doyle, recently published by Montana Historical
Society Press. They also ran as part of a fine feature on the Bozeman Trail entitled
"Tales from the Trail" in the Sunday, July 18, 1999, edition of the Billings
Gazette, Billings, Montana. From the diary of Ellen
"Nellie" Fletcher, June 22, 1866, at Crazy Woman Creek crossing between Kaycee
and Buffalo, Wyoming:
Camped at "Crazy Woman's Fork," a
small stream or river. It was a beautiful spot near the stream in a grove of large trees.
The men had blazing fires soon, and it was a pretty sight the white topped wagons and the
blazing fires shining through the trees, and the moon looking down quietly upon it all.
Over our wagon is a large tree bent over like an arch.
From the diary of C.M. Lee, September 22, 1865:
View and descent from bluffs on the
Yellowstone River across from the present site of Billings. Quite a valley along the river
on the other side and as we came in sight of it from the top of the bluffs it was
literally covered with buffalo as far as you can see also on the road today they were if
any odds thicker than ever and frequently ran so close to the train that the drivers could
shoot them down as they walked beside their teams they do not appear to be collected in
very heavy droves but are scattered all over the face of the country quietly grazing or
laying down.
From the diary of Davis Willson, August 7, 1866, near
Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming.
To the west rise the Big Horn
Mountains, snowcapped and, more than ever, grand and beautiful in the light of the golden
morning.
As we passed the Fort some distance we
came to a halt for nearly an hour and a half on account of the difficulty of the trains in
advance, in crossing the stream and ascending the bluffs beyond. As we lay there the brass
band at the Fort commenced playing. Such sounds in such a scene! There was something in
the wild, sweet strains that filled and floated through the deep reechoing valley that
spoke of home; yet so far distant and in so wild a place that it partook of the nature of
the scenes around it. It was like looking through the 'glass of time' into the dim Past,
viewing with kindled emotions the forms and scenes that once enshrined and hallowed it,
and yet the wild adventuresome Present all the while floating before diming and blinding
the vision.
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