The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes" Marcel Proust
Preface
About a year ago, I found myself deep in the rhythms of history—not in classrooms or libraries, but through the voices of old audio recordings. California history, in particular, began to weave itself around me. I listened to stories of explorers and emigrants, of rivers crossed and deserts endured, of the long, restless movement west. It was there that I encountered John C. Frémont, the Pathfinder, whose exploits in the 1840s helped to throw open the great continental corridors to settlers, soldiers, and dreamers.
Initially, the movement west was about land—a slow trickle of pioneers seeking new fields and freedom. But in 1848, with the strike at Sutter’s Mill, that trickle became a flood. Within a few short years, tens of thousands surged westward in the California Gold Rush, chasing opportunity across prairies, mountains, and deserts that offered no easy passage.
I listened to two full audiobooks on Frémont’s life, and by the midpoint of the second, a thought began to form—quietly at first, then insistently. What if I rode my motorcycle west along the Oregon Trail, and then followed the California Cutoff, tracing the same route my great-great-grandfather John W. Campbell had walked in 1849 as a 49er seeking gold? What if I could follow, mile for mile, the skeleton of the old emigrant road—not as a tourist glancing at signs, but as a traveler in motion, feeling the terrain, the distance, and the weight of the land beneath me?
It was more than a ride. It was a way to look through his eyes, to understand the choices and hardships that shaped my family’s history.
The Campbell story begins far from California, across the Atlantic. John William Campbell and his older brother William C. Campbell came from Ulster County, Ireland, part of that great wave of Irish families seeking new lives across the ocean. They first landed in New Brunswick, then moved down through Maine, eventually settling in Grant County, Wisconsin in 1838.
When gold was discovered a decade later, in 1848, it was already too late in the season for anyone to attempt the crossing. So John, like thousands of others, waited until 1849—the true Forty-Niner year. There were only two real choices for reaching California then:
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Walk across the continent, leading oxen and wagons along the Oregon and California Trails, a six-month overland journey through plains, deserts, and mountains.
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Or sail to Panama, cross the isthmus on foot (before the canal or transcontinental rail existed), and catch another ship up to San Francisco.
John chose to walk. Six months later, he arrived in the gold fields of California. William stayed behind in Wisconsin to work the farm. Only in 1870 did he follow westward, settling finally in San Joaquin County, California.
It’s one of those ironies history likes to play: John Campbell, who crossed the continent in 1849, ultimately returned east, spending his final years in Freeport, Illinois. William, who stayed behind, ended his days in California. Their lives crisscrossed the continent in opposite directions, each leaving a trail of land deeds, gravestones, and stories.
In planning this journey, I resolved to visit the key places of their lives—the graves, the towns, the landscapes they crossed—and to ride the same historic corridor that carried their hopes westward. From Ellenboro, Wisconsin, where John began his overland trek, to the Sierra Nevada, where Carson and Higby led emigrants through the granite wall, I wanted to see what they saw and travel where they traveled.
The following are my daily journal entries from my trip on the Oregon Trail and California Cutoff. Included are journal entries as one might find from John William Campbell's trek to the gold fields of California. John's entries are from the collective experiences of others like him that made the bold decision to cross into the unknown.
This was my road.
This was my adventure.
A motorcycle, a line on an old map, and a continent still whispering the echoes of wagon wheels.
Alan Campbell - Day 1
September 29, 2025 – Bolingbrook, Illinois
The morning cracked open over Bolingbrook, Illinois like an egg on a hot griddle—humid air rising in waves off the pavement. At 8:20 I stepped out of the hotel, boots hitting the road with that mix of anticipation and stubborn resolve that always marks the start of a long ride. I’d told myself the van storage yard was only a half-hour walk. Illinois had other plans.
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| My DL650 Suzuki in the Bolingbrook Warehouse |
The route wound through the quiet guts of an industrial zone—warehouses sleeping with their loading docks half open, chain-link fences glinting under a weak sun. Sidewalks appeared maybe ten percent of the time, the rest was a patchwork of wet grass and shoulderless blacktop. When the road ended, the lawns began—long grass, soft mud, hidden dips that grabbed at my boots. Trucks roared by, indifferent. It was a sweaty, silent hour-long march, and by the time I reached the storage building, I felt like I’d already ridden a leg of the journey.
The rear door stood open like a scene from some forgotten novel. Inside, a lone man at a desk looked up as if I’d just walked out of a mirage. Papers exchanged hands, and minutes later my motorcycle appeared—perched on the steel arms of a forklift, gleaming faintly in the morning light. Freedom delivered by machine. A few signatures, a quick hookup of the electrics, and I rolled her down the ramp. Easiest pickup I’d ever had. The crew was quick, no nonsense, the kind of quiet kindness you find in the Midwest when people see a traveler with purpose.
I tightened the mirrors, shifted the bags, re-packed the gear. Back to the hotel, an hour lost and gained all at once, then off toward Galena, Illinois, with a detour through Freeport.
The road opened up as the suburbs thinned, giving way to northwestern Illinois countryside—gentle hills, old farmsteads, traces of 19th-century wagon paths buried beneath asphalt. This part of Illinois was the western frontier in the 1830s and 1840s, settled by Yankees moving west from New England and New York. Towns like Freeport, founded in 1835 along the Pecatonica River, grew up as key stops for traders, settlers, and later railroad travelers heading toward the Mississippi.
Freeport held something personal for me: the graves of John William Campbell and my grandparents. John William was the ancestor who, a century and three-quarters earlier, had set out from Wisconsin for the California gold fields in 1849. Standing in that cemetery, the modern road humming in the distance, I could almost feel the weight of his journey pressing through time.
Finding the graves was a bit of a scavenger hunt. For John’s stone, a faded photo on my phone guided me through rows of lichen-covered markers, and there it was—tilted, weathered, but unmistakable. It had been twenty years since I last stood there, the memory gone soft at the edges.
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| John Campbell in Freeport |
My grandparents’ stone was trickier. I thought I remembered, but memory is a mischievous thing. I tried ten years ago and failed. This time, armed with GPS coordinates from Find-a-Grave, I got close but still wandered. Then fortune smiled—the cemetery office was open, which it hadn’t been the last time. Inside, a kind woman traced her finger on a map, handed me a detailed chart, and pointed me in the right direction. Fifteen minutes later, I stood before their stone too. The past, tangible in stone and earth.
Leaving Freeport, I let the miles carry me west. The Galena region rose ahead like an old frontier painting—rolling hills, deep ravines, and limestone bluffs. Unlike the rest of Illinois, this corner escaped the glaciers of the last Ice Age, leaving behind a “driftless” landscape of rugged beauty.
Galena itself is a town frozen in amber. Founded in the1820s on lead mining, it became a bustling river port by the 1840s, shipping lead down the Fever River (now the Galena River) to the Mississippi. By mid-century, Galena rivaled Chicago in size, a boomtown of steamboats, merchants, and miners. Ulysses S. Grant lived here before the Civil War, working in his father’s leather goods store. Walking its streets today, the 19th century still lingers in the brick facades and iron balconies.
By the time I checked into the hotel, the sun was low. I called my old friend Gary, a Galena local, and a couple of hours later we sat down to dinner, sharing stories like old river men swapping tales on the deck. He dropped me off afterward, and I fell into a deep, satisfied sleep. The journey had truly begun.
John William Campbell — Day 1
April 21st, 1849 — Ellenboro, Wisconsin
It’s just after five o’clock in the mornin’, and I’m out by the barn, seein’ to the horse and sortin’ the bit o’ gear I’ll be takin’ for the long road ahead. The moon’s but a sliver, hangin’ low like a cut fingernail, and Venus is shinin’ sharp beside it — a bright star to watch me off.
William’s standin’ nearby, quiet as the dawn, with his wife Susan and the wee girls — Jean, Anna, and Mary — clingin’ to her skirts like they’d hold the world still if they could. All three were born back in New Brunswick, before we made the long tramp down to Grant County. Hard to believe the miles we’ve already come, and stranger still to think of the country that lies before me now.
I’m waitin’ on the lads who’ll be ridin’ with me. Once they turn up, we’ll make for Dubuque, and from there, the real journey begins. There’s a weight on my chest this mornin’, sure enough — leavin’ family behind is no easy thing. But there’s a pull to the West, like a hand at my back, and I’ll not be ignorin’ it.
Alan Campbell - Day 2
September 30, 2025 - Galena, Illinois
The morning came lazy and golden. I cracked one eye and saw 8:45 glowing on the clock—late. Breakfast ended at nine. I stumbled into my clothes, boots half-laced, and sprinted down the hall like a man chasing a departing train. I slid into the dining room just as they were shutting it down, snagging the last lukewarm eggs, burnt-edge bacon, and the bitter bottom of the coffee pot. It tasted like a narrow victory, and it was.
Then came the ritual: tightening straps, packing gear, cinching bags, loading the bike like a ship’s deck before a voyage. I pointed the front wheel toward Ellenboro, Wisconsin, a speck on the map but a beacon in my family’s past. Within an hour, the highway narrowed, the world opened up, and I was there—if “there” is the right word. Ellenboro isn’t a town so much as a breath: maybe ten homes, a quiet bar-restaurant on Main Street, fields on all sides like a prairie ocean.
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| William Campbell Land |
At 11 a.m., I pushed open the bar door. The neon signs hummed like tired bees. I ordered a sandwich for later and asked the locals about the Campbells, the old land, the history. Blank stares, polite shakes of the head. No one knew. It didn’t surprise me—stories fade when the tellers are gone, and Ellenboro’s history lives more in the soil than in anyone’s memory.
Ellenboro’s roots run back to the 1840s and 1850s, when Irish and Yankee settlers drifted in, lured by cheap land and the fertile bottomlands near the Platte River. This valley country once belonged to the Ho-Chunk Nation, whose forced removal in the 1830s cracked open the land for European-American settlement. By the late 1840s, men like my ancestor John William Campbell were carving out farms in these valleys. When William Campbell sold his land years later, he described it as “bottom land”—rich, fertile, and prone to flooding.
With the sandwich tucked away, I rode on to Lancaster, the county seat, rolling through fields where generations of Campbells, Cutlers, and countless other families would have driven wagons and oxen. Lancaster was laid out in 1837 on high ground, chosen because it was less prone to the river’s wrath. Its courthouse square, still intact today, once rang with the clang of blacksmith hammers and the chatter of lawyers, farmers, and pioneers headed west.
I stopped at Memorial Park, spread my sandwich out by the lake, and let the wind push ripples across the water. At 1:00 sharp, I pulled into the Grant County Historical Society, a modest building holding vast corridors of memory. Inside, the Society’s president sat behind her desk like a guardian of forgotten stories. When I gave her the Campbell name, she moved with the quiet efficiency of someone who’s spent a lifetime handling old paper. She pulled plat maps and family histories from the shelves.
And then, there it was—Section 32, Ellenboro Township—the Campbell land. A small square on a faded map, but to me it was more than lines and ink. It was proof of a life lived here nearly two centuries ago, a life that eventually turned west toward California’s gold.
I turned the bike back toward Ellenboro, retracing old wagon trails in reverse. Twenty minutes later, I was there again, riding the edge of the land. Only one gravel road cut through Section 32. I didn’t take it—not for lack of skill, but because gravel means punctures and dust that clings like regret. Instead, I stood on the edge, looking into the valley. |
| Platte River in Ellenboro |
The Platte River runs through Ellenboro’s valley, flanked by steep, wooded hills rising like shoulders against the sky. The bottomlands are patchy, uneven, the kind of land that floods with the spring melt. The woman at the Historical Society told me the river still overflows regularly—it likely did in the Campbells’ day too, turning fields to swamps and wagons to mud. It was beautiful in a wild way, a reminder that nature always writes the last line.
From there, I set my course toward Dubuque, taking backroads that twist and dip through the ancient driftless landscape—land the glaciers spared, leaving behind rolling hills, hidden valleys, and streams that have been cutting their way toward the Mississippi for millennia.
Crossing the bridge into Dubuque always takes my breath. Founded in 1833, Dubuque is Iowa’s oldest city, born from lead mines, riverboats, and bold settlers. Julien Dubuque, the French-Canadian trader it’s named after, struck a deal with the Meskwaki to mine lead here in the late 18th century. Later came steamboats, timber, and industry—this was the western frontier once, the gateway to the great river.
I checked into my hotel around 3:30, the day sinking slowly behind the hills. A few chores, some quiet. Later, dinner. Another day behind me, the road ahead humming softly in the night.
John William Campbell — Day 2
April 22nd, 1849 — Dubuque, Iowa
We came to the Mississippi this mornin’, the great brown river runnin’ broad as a field, and crossed into Dubuque with the horse snortin’ at the smell of tar and water. The road down from Ellenboro was kindly enough—no devil’s work in it—though the miles sit heavier on a beast when the packs are full and the day not warm.
They took one dollar off me for the ferry—a dear price, so it is—but cheaper than swimmin’ horse and man both, God save us. The town’s a busy clatter of hammers and tongues, and the river itself talkin’ louder than any of them. I’ve the West at my back now, pressin’ like a hand, and the old country a whisper behind the ear. Tomorrow we push on again.
Alan Campbell - Day 3
October 1, 2025 - Dubuque, Iowa
Morning in Dubuque rose clear and calm, the Mississippi hanging in the air like a secret. I filled the tank, wiped the dew from the seat, and kicked the engine to life. The road north whispered of old river towns and lost friends. My destination was Guttenberg, Iowa—a meeting fifty years in the making with my old buddy Steve. Half a century since we’d last shared a laugh. Time’s a strange river itself.
Steve had told me to take the Balltown route—the main road was closed, but that detour turned out to be the kind of accidental poetry you only find when a bridge is out or a sign is missing. Balltown sits high above the Mississippi Valley, perched like a stubborn eagle refusing to leave its post. The road climbed into green hills that rolled like slow waves, and suddenly there was a bench—a simple wooden bench—overlooking everything. I stopped. Sat. Let the view wash over me.
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| Mississippi View from Balltown |
Below, the Mississippi River unfurled like a silver ribbon in the sun. This was once the great highway of the continent—before asphalt and Google Maps—where steamboats puffed through the fog and fur traders shouted in French, Dakota, and English. Balltown itself dates back to the 1850s, a German Catholic settlement that grew around Breitbach’s Country Dining, the oldest continuously operating bar and restaurant in Iowa, founded in 1852. You can almost hear the echoes of clinking steins and fiddle tunes carried up on the breeze.
The ride down into Guttenberg was like slipping through time. The town was named after Johannes Gutenberg, but it was Germans—not printers—who built it in the 1840s. They stacked limestone buildings along the river, solid and squared, facing the Mississippi like old soldiers. Many of those buildings still stand, weathering floods and decades, stubborn as ever. I rolled through quiet streets and pulled up at Steve’s house just as he was checking the mail—as if fifty years hadn’t passed, just a long pause in the same conversation.
We reconnected in that easy way old friends do, where decades dissolve in a handshake and a grin. He introduced me to Cindy, his wife—someone new to my story but already folded in—and we set off for lunch at a local downtown café. The town still carries that river-town hum, slower than the highways, shaped by the rhythm of the water.
After lunch, Cindy joined us for a ride north to Pikes Peak State Park, perched above the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers. It’s the same bluff where explorer Zebulon Pike stood in 1805, scouting for a fort. The air up there is thick with history—French voyageurs once guided keelboats beneath, Ho-Chunk and Meskwaki villages thrived along the water, and later, steamboats groaned their way upriver carrying hopeful settlers westward. We stood at the overlook, ice cream bars in hand, staring at the rivers folding together below—two great liquid highways meeting like old friends.
That night, Steve ordered a pizza, and we wound down with a movie. I was bone-tired, the good kind of tired, the kind you earn. The river hummed in the distance as I drifted off—a low, eternal music.
Alan Campbell - Day 4
October 2, 2025 - Guttenberg, Iowa
The house was dark when I rose at 5:00 a.m., Steve and Cindy’s place still wrapped in the soft hush of predawn. The air held that cool, river-valley quiet—the kind that feels older than the house itself. I packed quietly, gear piled on the stairs, boots soft on the steps, then stepped outside into the stillness. The motorcycle sat waiting on a flat patch of gravel, dew beading on the tank like a cold drink. I checked the oil by headlamp glow, my breath fogging faintly. Inside, breakfast was warm and easy, shared with Steve and Cindy at their kitchen table like travelers gathering strength before the next leg.
We said our goodbyes in the dim light—those warm, midwestern farewells that aren’t loud but linger in the chest long after the engines start. I rolled down the driveway, over a couple of bumps, and back through Guttenberg, heading south as dawn cracked open over the Mississippi Valley. The cool morning air wrapped around me as the river slid off to my left like a dark ribbon.
I was off to visit Greg, an old friend from college that now lives in Atlantic, Iowa. Steve had told me to take Highway 20 east, and I did. It was perfect—rolling Iowa countryside, open stretches that whispered of wagons and riverboats. This road, like so many in Iowa, often follows older trails—sometimes literal stagecoach routes or plank roads that guided 19th-century settlers westward. By mid-morning, I connected with I-35, pointing the front wheel south toward Atlantic.
The interstate miles roared beneath me. As I approached I-80, the wind picked up—hard and constant. Giant wind turbines rose along the roadside, their blades scything the sky with slow, endless turns. This is the Loess Hills corridor, a stretch of wind-carved ridges running along western Iowa, formed from fine silt blown in after the Ice Age. Modern wind farms now stand where, centuries ago, native tribes like the Ioway and Otoe roamed the tallgrass prairie, following bison herds along these same ridges.
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| Atlantic Iowa at Sunset |
By noon I rolled off I-80 into Atlantic, Iowa. Fifty years melted away. Atlantic was where Steve and I had once lived for a month, working road construction as young men, sunburnt and full of possibility. Back then it had seemed like just another small town on the plains. Now, returning, it struck me like a painting of the ideal Iowa town—neat streets, friendly faces, tidy homes, a rhythm that hadn’t surrendered to time. Founded in 1868, Atlantic was born of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad, one of many prairie towns that sprang up like clockwork as the iron rails carved their way west.
I found Greg’s house easily; some places never really leave your internal map. We greeted each other with that easy warmth reserved for old friends, then headed downtown for lunch. Atlantic’s downtown still carries echoes of its railroad boom years—brick buildings, narrow storefronts, faded ghost signs advertising long-gone merchants. The town had once been a hub for grain shipping, where elevators loaded corn onto boxcars headed toward Chicago and beyond.
Greg suggested I stay, but he had to leave for an engagement in Lincoln that afternoon, so after lunch he hit the road, leaving me to mind the house. Walking through his place stirred old memories: 45 years earlier, my dog Amber and I had spent a winter night here, sledding down one of Atlantic’s big hills like kids chasing the moon. The air then was sharp and alive, just like now, only the years have changed.
Later, as I prepped the bike for the next day, I noticed the rear tire was thinning, the tread worn down from the miles already eaten up. That was something John Campbell never had to think about in 1849—horseshoes, yes; Metzeler tires, no. I started calling around Omaha and Council Bluffs for replacements, and struck gold with Edwards Motorsports. They had exactly one tire in stock that would fit. “Be here at 9:00 a.m.,” they said. “I will,” I replied.
The day settled into quiet. The town outside grew still, the same stillness that must have blanketed it when the first settlers watched the sunset from their porches after a long day in the fields. I thought about how Atlantic sits on land once traveled by pioneers heading toward Council Bluffs, the last major outfitting stop before striking out on the Mormon Trail or the California and Oregon Trails west. In many ways, I was following their ghost tracks—but with a throttle instead of reins.
Alan Campbell - Day 5
October 3, 2025 - Atlantic, Iowa
Morning light crept over Atlantic, Iowa, soft and gold. I made breakfast in Greg’s quiet house, then moved through the familiar dance—tightening straps, loading panniers, securing the last bits of gear. One of the Barkbuster bolts on the left handguard had worked loose overnight, so out came the toolkit; a few careful turns and she was solid again. By eight I was rolling west through Iowa’s back roads toward Council Bluffs, the bike humming through the gentle loess hills like a low note across a cello string.
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| Suzuki Tire Replacement |
I reached Edwards Motorsports at nine on the dot. Cody at the counter told me one hour and twenty minutes for the tire swap—precise, like a Swiss watch. I wandered their showroom while the mechanics worked, surrounded by racks of helmets and the smell of fresh rubber, chain oil, and brewed coffee. Exactly one hour and twenty minutes later, Cody reappeared, grin wide. “She’s ready.” I laughed out loud. Punctuality like that belongs in a legend.
Refueled and re-tired, I threaded west out of Council Bluffs. This place has always been a launch point—a staging ground. In the 1840s and ’50s, emigrant wagon trains gathered here along the Missouri River, loading up flour, bacon, coffee, tools, rifles, and hopes, before striking out along the Mormon, Oregon, and California Trails. Their routes followed river valleys, trading stations, and whispered rumors of good crossings. Now I rode on blacktop layered over those same invisible tracks.
By midday, the wind had shifted. Hot air came roaring up from the south, steady and unrelenting. The sky stretched wide and hard, and the highway shimmered like hammered metal. Somewhere west of Kearney, just north of the interstate, a small sign caught my eye: “Susan O. Haile Memorial.” I eased off the highway and followed the paved road to the marker.
The monument stands on a quiet rise—a granite slab, modest but deliberate. There’s no gift shop, no paved plaza. Just wind, grass, and sky. A plaque tells her story:
“In memory of Susan O. Haile, of Lafayette County, Missouri, who died June 2, 1852, age 34 years, 5 months.”
Susan was born Susan Seawell in Missouri in 1817. She and her husband Richard Haile joined a wagon train heading west along the Oregon-California Trail in the summer of 1852. This was the “cholera corridor”—a stretch between the Little Blue River and the Platte where contaminated water and poor sanitation cut through emigrant trains like wildfire. Thousands died here, sometimes within hours of the first cramps. Susan was one of them.
The story says Richard buried her beside the trail and fashioned her coffin from the boards of their wagon box. Later, he returned with a proper headstone, hauling it back across the prairie. Some tellings claim he brought it all the way in a wheelbarrow, though historians debate that detail. What isn’t debated is the love and grief it took to return at all. Her grave became known as “The Lone Grave,” though in truth, dozens—maybe hundreds—of emigrants rest anonymously in the sandy soil nearby.
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| Susan Haile Grave Memorial |
The actual grave lies another half mile up a dirt road, beyond the paved pull-off. I stood at the turnoff, looking down that dusty stretch. Out here, a puncture or a slide can turn a simple detour into a real problem, so I made the call not to take the bike up. But standing at the memorial, the wind pressing against my jacket, the land stretching out in all directions—it felt as if she was right there. The same wind that carried her wagon train’s dust now rattled the plaque. Her marker isn’t elaborate, but it hums with presence.
I imagined the 1852 caravan stopped here—wagons circled, oxen resting, water barrels low. A family gathered, burying their dead in the wind while the endless line of emigrants rolled slowly past, each with their own private griefs. Her grave became a waymarker: emigrant diaries mention it, noting her name as they passed. She was no longer just Susan—she was a point on the trail, a human compass.
Back on the bike, I merged onto I-80, heading west into Nebraska’s Platte River valley. This was the corridor—the artery of the westward movement. The Oregon Trail, California Trail, Mormon Trail, Pony Express, the first telegraph line, and eventually the Union Pacific Railroad all ran along this same ribbon of land. The Platte River, wide and shallow, made for an easy natural highway. Pioneers joked it was “too thick to drink and too thin to plow,” but it offered grass, water, and a gentle grade through the heart of the continent.
The day burned hot. I poured water down my jacket to stay cool, the wind evaporating it almost instantly. For six hours I chased the horizon, fields and sky flickering past like frames of an old film. By late afternoon, the land tilted upward toward Ogallala, and the sun dropped behind a pale haze.
I checked into a new Best Western—three stories, clean, with a Walmart across the street. Ogallala has its own ghosts: in the 1870s, it was a notorious cattle-drive terminus, where Texas cowboys and gamblers met under flickering lanterns. Before that, it was Pawnee and Lakota land, and before that, bison migration routes traced these same paths.
I walked to Walmart for food, checked the oil—more gone than I’d expected after the hot, fast run—and made a second trip for motorcycle oil. Back in the room, as the air conditioner hummed and the plains night settled outside, my thoughts drifted back to Susan. She lay out there somewhere, a lone grave on the prairie, watching a hundred and seventy-three years of travelers pass by. I was just another, modern and temporary.
John William Campbell — Day 19
May 10th, 1849 — Council Bluffs, Iowa
Came at last to Council Bluffs this afternoon, the horse wearied from the count o’ creeks and crossings—God knows there were scores of them—and every broad river wantin’ its toll.
Alan Campbell - Day 6
October 4, 2025 - Ogallala, Nebraska
I woke to confusion. My phone said 6:30; the hotel lobby clock said 5:30. The clerk smiled when I asked about breakfast. “Mountain time,” she said. I’d crossed a line in the night without noticing—an invisible seam stitched across the plains. My iPhone hadn’t caught up, still clinging to Central Time like a stubborn traveler. I went back upstairs, slipped under the covers, and stole another hour of sleep.
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| Fuel Filter Connection Leak |
Later, breakfast. Then the usual packing ritual—layering gear, cinching straps, coaxing the bike into readiness. Just as I was about to swing a leg over, I saw a drip beneath the machine. Gasoline. I sniffed, confirmed, stripped gear off, popped the seat. A fuel filter clamp—flathead screw—had worked loose. Of course, my toolkit had everything except a flathead. So off to Walmart I went, returning with a six-screwdriver set because they wouldn’t sell me just one. Back in the parking lot, I carved the packaging open with my knife like a man raiding a frontier supply crate, tightened the clamp, wiped the gasoline from my fingers, and finally rolled out onto the road.
My route hugged Highway 26, that old emigrant corridor. The road itself is modern blacktop, but beneath the asphalt lies the heartbeat of the Oregon Trail—wagon ruts, graves, campfire ash buried under a century and a half of dust. Every few miles, historical signposts rose on the roadside: brown and white markers telling stories of wagon trains, river crossings, trading posts, and nameless emigrants who perished along the way. Some signs stood solitary in fields, facing nothing but sky and wind; others clustered near rest stops like ghostly interpreters of the land. I passed dozens—maybe more than a hundred over the course of the day. Each one was a whisper, a reminder: you’re not the first to travel this road.
Chimney Rock
Two hours later I arrived at Chimney Rock, the sentinel of the Platte. Rising 325 feet from the valley floor, this sandstone spire was the most famous landmark on the overland trails. Emigrants called it a “lighthouse on the prairie.” In the 1840s and 1850s, diary after diary records the thrill of spotting it from miles away—a sign they’d truly reached the Platte Valley. For some, it marked progress; for others, the first hint of the immense western unknown.
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| Chimney Rock |
I stopped at the visitor center, paid my $5, and walked through the small museum—maps, wagon replicas, faded journals under glass. From the parking lot I could see the spire in the distance, partially obscured by autumn haze. I tried to ride closer but the road turned to dirt at the end, so I stopped there. Like Susan Haile’s grave the day before, the sight didn’t need proximity to be powerful. Chimney Rock stands like a monument to human movement—an accidental natural obelisk that became a symbol of ambition.
Fort Laramie
From Chimney Rock I turned northwest, the air cooling as clouds swept down from the north. My destination: Fort Laramie, Wyoming.
Fort Laramie wasn’t just a fort. It was the hub, the beating heart of the overland migrations—a military post, trading center, diplomatic station, and crossroads for thousands heading west. Originally established in 1834 as Fort William, a private fur trading post by William Sublette and Robert Campbell (no relation), it later became Fort John under the American Fur Company. In 1849, the U.S. Army purchased it and renamed it Fort Laramie, turning it into the most important post on the Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails.
By the early 1850s, as many as 50,000 emigrants passed the fort each year. Wagon trains stopped here to restock, repair wagons, and get the latest trail news. Fort Laramie was also where the U.S. government negotiated treaties with Plains tribes—including the monumental Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851), which set boundaries for tribal lands (at least on paper), establishing uneasy passage for emigrants through Indigenous territory.
And then there was John C. Frémont, “The Pathfinder,” whose name drifts through these plains like legend. In 1842 and again in 1843, Frémont arrived at Fort Laramie during his expeditions to map the Oregon Trail and survey the Rocky Mountains. He wrote of the fort as “a solitary post amid a desolation of boundless plains,” yet it was from here that his parties fanned westward, producing reports and maps that electrified the East. His accounts made the overland route seem possible for thousands who followed. Without Frémont’s romanticized reports—and the careful, if sometimes embellished, surveys—many settlers might never have braved this corridor.
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| Fort Laramie During Government Shutdown |
By the time I arrived, clouds hung low and the temperature had dropped sharply. I rolled up to the gates—locked. The government shutdown had closed the site. No soldiers, no rangers, just wind whistling through empty structures. I stood at the gate, staring across the river at the low buildings beyond. Even silent, Fort Laramie radiated weight. You could almost hear the hammering of wagon wheels being repaired, the chatter of trappers and soldiers, the clatter of cavalry boots on packed dirt. I snapped a few photos through the fence, then climbed back on the bike as the wind picked up.
The rain started a couple of hours later—first a few tentative drops, then steady drizzle, and finally a full curtain of cold water. I stopped at a rest area to wriggle into my bright yellow rain suit, a modern twist on the old oilskins emigrants wore. For the next hour, the rain drummed steadily on my helmet. Twenty minutes from my destination, it eased. Ten minutes out, the sky opened—a wall of rain. I rode through it laughing, soaked but alive.
At the hotel in Casper, the clerk warned of a freeze warning overnight. I stripped off wet gear, grateful for heat and walls, while outside the plains readied themselves for another cold night.
This stretch—from Chimney Rock to Fort Laramie—is the soul of the Oregon Trail. You can feel it in the wind, see it in the signposts, trace it in the shape of the land. Chimney Rock pointed the way; Fort Laramie welcomed, warned, and dispatched. And along Highway 26, history stands quietly beside the road, waiting for anyone willing to read its markers.
John William Campbell — Day 43
June 3rd, 1849 — Chimney Rock
They’d the right of it who said you could spy Chimney Rock from thirty, forty miles and more—stickin’ up from the plain like a great stone finger pointin’ the Almighty’s way. First true wonder we’ve seen since leavin’ the soft country; the land itself turnin’ lean and rangy, sky stretched tight as a drum. The lads rode quiet when it showed, each man measureless in his own head, for there’s a feelin’ comes on you here—that the road’s grown older than your bones, and you’re only passin’ through
John William Campbell — Day 48
June 8, 1849 - Fort Laramie, at the forks of the North Platte and Laramie
We came to Fort Laramie this day, praise God—low buildings of log and adobe crouched by the river, with the clang of a smithy ringin’ and the smell of tar and bacon in the air. After the long run up the Platte—sage and sand till a man goes dumb—this place is like a fair-day on the edge of nowhere. Men shoutin’, beasts drinkin’, wheels up on blocks, shoes off oxen, and every soul tradin’ news dearer than gold.
They call it the traveler’s heart of the road, and I think it true. Here a body may mend a wagon, shoe a team, lay in flour and coffee, swap a broken ax for a sound one, and learn what lies ahead—where the ford runs shallow, which trail is cut up, who was took by cholera, and where the buffalo still graze. Soldiers about, trappers and traders too, and Lakota and Cheyenne folk with robes and ponies finer than any I’ve set eyes on. There’s peace kept uneasy by treaty talk and tolls, but the rivers mind their own business and go on west all the same.
We’ll not tarry long. The lads are for Independence Rock and the Sweetwater, and beyond that, God help us, the California Cutoff where a man chooses his fortune with the turn of a wheel. But for this night I’ll sleep light under a clean sky, bellies fed and beasts watered, tools in order and hearts somewhat stouter—for Fort Laramie is the great hinge of the journey, and once you swing past it, the door of the plains closes behind and the mountains open before.
Alan Campbell - Day 7
October 5, 2025 - Casper, Wyoming
The day began under a gray Wyoming sky. I woke at the Best Western in Casper, looked outside, and saw rain smearing across the parking lot like a wet brushstroke. Forty-five degrees. Cold. I checked the forecast—no break coming. This was the kind of day emigrants called “a hard go.” So I packed up, tightened my gear, and rolled west onto Highway 220, the rain tapping against my helmet like fingers on a drum.
The landscape south of Casper is a harsh kind of beautiful—open sagebrush plains, the road tracing the same corridor that the Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails once followed along the Sweetwater River. The rain came in pulses, sometimes misting, sometimes in full sheets, blurring the line between road and sky. There’s no shelter out here. No trees. No barns. Just the empty sweep of the land and the occasional pickup roaring past.
Devil’s Gate
Somewhere west of Casper, just before reaching Independence Rock, the highway crests a rise—and there it is: Devil’s Gate. Even through the drizzle, the sight was unmistakable.
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| The Backroads of Wyoming in the Rain |
A narrow granite cleft splits the Sweetwater Ridge like a sword cut—330 feet deep, only about 100 feet wide. The Sweetwater River rushes through it, churning against the ancient rock. Emigrants in the 1840s and 1850s wrote about it again and again in their journals:
“The Sweetwater cuts through the mountain here in a most singular manner. The opening is narrow, deep and perpendicular, resembling the cut of a sword.” — Oregon Trail diary, 1849
For emigrants, Devil’s Gate wasn’t just scenery—it was a landmark, a waypoint, a moment of awe after hundreds of miles of plains. Wagon trains didn’t actually pass through the gap (the river made that impossible). Instead, they followed a route to the south, crossing the Sweetwater nearby. Many camped at its base, carving their names into the granite at Independence Rock, a few miles down the trail, known as “The Register of the Desert.”
Later, in 1856, Devil’s Gate became a place of sorrow and endurance for the Mormon handcart companies. When an early winter trapped hundreds of emigrants on the trail, a rescue party established a cache site here, storing supplies and waiting out the brutal season. The granite walls have held those echoes ever since.
Even from the highway, Devil’s Gate loomed with quiet power, rain beading on my visor as I rode past. It felt like passing through a threshold—an unmarked gate between worlds.
Hours of cold rain followed, the landscape flattening toward Rawlins. By the time I rolled into town, I was frozen through. I parked at a small café, peeled off soaked layers, and realized why the cold had bitten so deep: my hydration pack had leaked an entire bottle of water down my back. I sat shaking in a booth, hot tea and eggs slowly bringing me back. A family next to me showed me a snow-covered mountain photo on their phone and advised me to “stick to 30”—their way of saying Interstate 80, the modern descendant of the emigrant road.
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| Wyoming Rain Riding |
Rain gear on, body warmed, I pushed west again. Out on these long stretches, my mind drifted to emigrant decision points. Near Fort Bridger, not far ahead on my route, wagon trains faced their pivotal moment:
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Follow the Oregon Trail northwest toward Fort Hall and the Columbia River, or
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Take the California Cutoff, chasing gold dreams down the Humboldt River into the Sierra.
Many made that choice soaked to the skin, huddled around wagons like I was huddled in that café. Their maps were rumors; their weather was worse.
The rain came and went in bands as I rode toward Evanston, climbing gradually toward 6,750 feet. About half an hour out, the clouds finally broke. The sun spilled over the hills, lighting up bands of golden trees—the first true autumn colors I’d seen all trip. Based on the altitude and region, they were almost certainly quaking aspens, maybe mixed with cottonwoods along the streams. Aspens love this elevation, forming luminous yellow groves that catch the light like lanterns in the hills.
Evanston itself was once a Union Pacific railroad stop, but long before that, emigrant wagons passed nearby along the Hams Fork and Bear River routes toward Fort Bridger—the critical fork where the Oregon Trail met the California dream. By the time they reached this country, wagons were battered, oxen thin, shoes worn through. Yet they pressed on.
I checked into the hotel, taped up the oil on the bike, grabbed dinner from Walmart, and thawed out.
As night settled, I thought back on Devil’s Gate—how it loomed dark against the rain, carved by water long before any wagon ever rolled by. For emigrants, it was a waypoint. For me, it felt like a quiet sentinel of the trail, watching modern travelers pass just as it watched the pioneers 175 years ago.
John William Campbell — Day 54
June 14th, 1849 — Devil's Gate, Wyoming
Came upon the Devil’s Gate this day—aye, a wicked great cleft in the black rock, as if the Lord Himself had split the ridge with a sword. The Sweetwater runs hard through the narrow throat, shoutin’ like a madman, and no wagon in Christendom could take that way. So we kept to the south side, leadin’ the beasts careful on the gravel bars, the wind cuttin’ and the sky wide and bare as a beggar’s bowl.
There’s a feelin’ comes over a man here—names scratched on stone at the last camp, smoke gone to heaven, and the road pullin’ west like a hook in the heart. I said a prayer for the ones ahead and the ones behind, then set my shoulder to the trace again, for the gate minds no man, and the miles won’t walk themselves.
Alan Campbell - Day 8
October 6, 2025 - Evanston, Wyoming
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| The Colors of Evanston Wyoming |
Layer by layer, I armored up: wool base, thermal shirt, heavy wool sweater, windbreaker, jacket, and finally the bright yellow rain suit—six layers in all. The bike coughed once, then came alive, warming slowly in the cold. I rolled out of Evanston under low clouds, heading west toward Salt Lake City on Interstate 80, the modern echo of the old emigrant roads.
The highway descended quickly, twisting down through Wasatch Mountain passes. A sign near the top read 6,800 feet. The road dropped fast, the hillsides steep and rugged, streaked with the last of autumn’s color. As I neared the Great Basin’s edge, I saw it—a clear line where the low clouds ended. One moment I was in fog, the next I burst into sunlight, blue sky blazing like a promise. The temperature lifted a few degrees, and for the first time that day, the ride felt good.
Salt Lake City appeared ahead, framed by mountains and bright air. Emigrant trails once skirted this region long before the city existed, following Hams Fork, Bear River, and later the Mormon Trail into the valley. After 1847, Salt Lake became a major waypoint for emigrants heading to California—some seeking rest, others resupplying before plunging into the Great Basin. I threaded through the city easily, stopping at a McDonald’s on the far side to shed my rain gear and refuel.
Then west.
The Salt Flats
The highway stretched out flat and infinite, cutting across the Bonneville Salt Flats, a place that feels less like earth and more like some lunar plateau. Out here, the land is white and level, and the horizon is a line drawn by a god with a ruler. Wind streaked across the surface, picking up crystals that tinkled faintly against my helmet. The sun reflected off the salt in a way that made the world seem bigger than it should be.
Midway across the flats, I overtook another motorcyclist riding slowly—about 50 mph—because perched on the pillion seat behind him was a tiny Chihuahua. The little dog sat upright like a ship’s figurehead, somehow holding steady in the cool wind. I laughed inside my helmet. He waved. For a moment, it felt like two travelers in a vast, absurdly beautiful amphitheater.
I stopped at a wayside at the edge of the flats. People were out on the salt, running, posing for photos, treating the landscape like a natural stage. Emigrants didn’t run here. They crawled. In the late 1840s and early 1850s, wagon trains leaving Salt Lake to follow the Hastings Cutoff and California Trail had to cross this same desert basin—except then, the salt crust often broke under the weight of wagons, revealing alkaline mud beneath. Wheels stuck fast. Oxen exhausted themselves. Some emigrants abandoned wagons entirely. Journals describe animals dying mid-crossing, their bones later bleaching in the sun for decades.
For the Forty-Niners—the gold seekers of 1849—this stretch marked the beginning of the Great Basin crossing. Unlike the Platte or Sweetwater valleys, there were no rivers here to follow. Once over one low pass, another waited twenty miles ahead, and another beyond that. No trees. No shade. No easy water. Many emigrants likened it to a sea of salt and sand, endless and punishing.
“The salt plains are the hardest of all trials. We crossed in the night, the crust breaking, wheels sinking. At dawn, the sun rose on a scene of white desolation, wagons scattered like toys.” — California Trail diary, 1850
The Descent to Lovelock
I kept riding west, watching pass after pass appear, cross, and fade behind me—each one a subtle rise in the basin floor, like the long breath of the desert. The weather warmed, slowly, to something almost tolerable. My layers stayed on; habit more than necessity now.
By late afternoon, I decided Reno was too far. The light was dropping, and pushing into the Sierra in the dark didn’t sound wise. Instead, I stopped in Lovelock, Nevada, a little basin town that grew up along the old emigrant corridor and later the Central Pacific Railroad. It had been a California Trail stop, a desert watering point before the long push to the Humboldt Sink.
Dinner was simple—picked up from Walmart—and by the time I reached my hotel room, I felt the day’s miles in every joint. Over 500 miles ridden, from frosted morning in Evanston to the salt-white flats and into Nevada’s basin country.
Lying in bed, I thought of the Forty-Niners crossing the flats: their wagons stuck, their oxen failing, the heat beating down. I had wind protection, gasoline, asphalt, and GPS. They had instinct, rumor, and endurance. But we both watched the same sun set over the basin, both trying to reach the mountains on the far side.
John William Campbell — Day 88
July 18, 1849 - At the edge of the Great Salt Flats
We’ve come at last to the white country, the flats shinin’ out before us like a sea froze solid under the sun—salt to the horizon, hard where it holds, treacherous where it breaks. The lads fell quiet when we topped the rise and saw it laid out—no trees, no shade, no kindly river bank—only that glitterin’ waste and the heat rollin’ off it like breath from an oven.
They say this is the crux of the California Cutoff, and I believe it. A man must choose his hour and husband his strength, for there’s little water and less mercy once you set hoof upon that white. We’ll fill every keg and skin we own, soak wheels, cut grass for the beasts, and travel by night when the crust bears better and the wind takes the edge off the burn. If you misjudge the miles, you’re done—oxen bog to the belly where the salt gives to black mud, wagons sink to the axle, and men throw their gear to spare the teams. Many’s the tale of trunks and stoves and fine coats left out there like bones on a battlefield.
But cross it we must, for beyond the flats the road runs to the Humboldt and on toward the Sierra, and there’s talk of gold at Sutter’s mill enough to put a prayer in the mouth of the faithless. I’m not fool enough to wager our lives on shine and rumor, but I’ll not turn back neither. The West has its hand at my back yet, and I’ll go where it pushes till the road runs out or the mountains do.
So I’ll say my beads, tighten the girths, and lay the lash light upon the steadiest of our team. Nightfall, we step off—slow and straight as a plumb line across the white. May the Lord mind our feet and keep the crust under us, for out here a man’s only measure is his water, his wit, and his will.
Alan Campbell - Day 9
October 7, 2025 - Lovelock, Nevada
I woke in Lovelock, Nevada, at six a.m. The desert air was crisp, forty degrees, the kind that settles into your jacket seams and refuses to leave. Downstairs, eggs and bacon. Back up to the room. The first slant of sunlight crept over the hotel roof as I packed. Layers again—five this time, like the day before but minus the rain suit. By 8:20 a.m., I rolled out under a blue sky, the desert still hushed.
The ride west was smooth. The land here is open, broad sweeps of sagebrush desert flattening toward Reno, where modern traffic roared unexpectedly along I-80. After days of quiet, the density was jarring—but it never congealed into stop-and-go. I peeled south toward Carson, and suddenly everything bore that name: Carson Valley, Carson Lake, Carson City, Carson Pass. It was as if the man himself had stamped his name across half of the Sierra. In a way, he had.
Kit Carson and the Sierra Crossing
Christopher “Kit” Carson (1809–1868) was a frontiersman, trapper, scout, soldier, and guide who became woven into the mythology of the American West. Small in stature, soft-spoken by many accounts, he nonetheless moved through the wilderness with a kind of quiet authority that inspired legends in his own lifetime.
Carson’s most famous exploits came through his partnership with John C. Frémont, the “Pathfinder.” Between 1842 and 1845, Carson served as Frémont’s chief scout and guide on three expeditions that mapped huge swaths of the West—including the Rockies, Great Basin, and Sierra Nevada. It was Carson’s knowledge of trails, river crossings, and Native trade routes that made those journeys possible. Frémont wrote in glowing terms of his guide’s skill, and those reports—serialized and romanticized—helped spark the great migration west.
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| Up to Carson Pass in the Sierras |
In 1844, during Frémont’s second expedition, Carson guided the party from the Great Basin over the Sierra Nevada via what would later be called Carson Pass. Winter snow was building; the mountains ahead were no gentle hills. Carson’s knowledge of a navigable route through the high granite was crucial. They descended eventually to Sutter’s Fort in the Sacramento Valley—months before gold fever swept the land—but their trail would become a key corridor for California emigrants in 1849 and the 1850s.
The Carson Pass route became one of the principal emigrant trails over the Sierra, favored over Donner Pass by many Forty-Niners for its slightly gentler grades and fewer obstacles. It was hard, but not impossible—and in the 19th century, “not impossible” was as good as gold.
Carson Pass
The road climbed steadily as I followed Highway 88 toward Carson Pass. The air cooled, the light changed, and suddenly the Sierra rose before me in all their sharp-edged glory. I tried to imagine John Campbell and his companions after weeks across the basin—dusty, half-spent—lifting their eyes to this granite wall. How must it have felt to stand before such a barrier, knowing you still had to get over?
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| Looking East from Carson Pass |
The modern road is a smooth ribbon, winding easily upward. I stopped at the summit to take pictures—Carson Pass, elevation 8,574 ft. A lake spread below, ringed by autumn-bright trees, the granite peaks rising behind it like stern sentinels. I couldn’t fathom how Carson found this route, only that he did, and that thousands followed.
Crossing was easy for me—just throttle, gears, and patience—but for emigrants, this was a final trial. After hundreds of desert miles, they faced snow, cold, narrow ledges, and exhausted animals. But Carson’s path held.
Descent into the Central Valley
The road down the western slope of the Sierra was long and gradual. Two hours of descent carried me from crisp alpine air into the oven heat of the lowlands. Somewhere near an overlook, I met a couple on a Gold Wing, heading up. “What’s it like down below?” I asked. “Eighty degrees,” the man said, grinning. Ten miles later, I pulled over and stripped off everything but two layers—my riding pants still double-lined and already too hot.
I rolled through Sutter Creek, pulled into a parking lot to check signal, and spotted a family walking toward a food stand. Turned out to be a Mexican restaurant tucked into the corner of the lot. It smelled too good to pass up. Burrito in hand, I sat on the curb and booked a hotel in Stockton, deciding to stop early and visit a place I’d nearly skipped.
Stockton & John W. Campbell
In Stockton Rural Cemetery, I found the grave of John William Campbell, William Campbell’s son, in the Bonham family plot. John passed away in 1938. The last of the Campbell's decending from William Campbell. The cemetery office was staffed by two young women who quickly located the site. The plot was surprisingly large—maybe forty by forty feet—with roughly ten graves, including John, his wife, his sister, and others from the family tree.
They showed me a letter from 1986 written by a descendant asking to be buried there as well; he died in 1990, leaving three sons—my contemporaries now. Standing there, amid rows of stones, I felt the continuity of names and journeys. John’s grave wasn’t far from where Carson’s trail had deposited thousands into California.
By late afternoon, the heat was brutal—near ninety. I checked into my hotel, checked the oil, found food nearby, and collapsed for the evening.
Kit Carson’s Shadow
Kit Carson’s legacy is complicated. He was both a folk hero and a frontline participant in America’s westward expansion, which displaced countless Indigenous peoples. As a scout, he opened trails; as a soldier later in life, he led campaigns against Navajo and Apache groups. Yet in the 1840s, along the California Trail, his role was pivotal: without his knowledge of the Sierra, John C. Frémont’s expedition might have turned back—or perished.
His name now dots the landscape: Carson City, Carson River, Carson Pass. Riding through these places, you can still feel the weight of his pathfinding, as if the road itself remembers.
John William Campbell — Day 150
Carson Valley, at the foot o’ the Sierra — September 18, 1849
We’ve put our backs to the Humboldt dust and come down at last into this green-bottomed valley, the great Sierra liftin’ up before us like a wall raised by giants. There’s cottonwood and aspen along the water, yellow as coin when the wind turns them, and the air’s a new sharp—bite of frost at daybreak that sets a man thinkin’ on snow.
We’ve called a halt here, two, maybe three days, God willin’. The beasts are ribb’d and sore-shoul’d, and the wheels want seein’ to. We’ve a smith’s blaze goin’ in camp—shoes off, shoes on, nails drove true—and the lads are cutting brake-blocks from good dry timber, for they say the west side falls away like the back o’ a church roof and will burn a wheel to ash if you’re careless.
All day there’s been bargain and sorrow along the wagons—men lightenin’ loads to make the climb. I saw a fine iron stove set down gentle as a child by the trail, and a travel trunk opened to the sky, skirts and books and a cracked mirror set out like a market no one will buy. Tools in twos we’ve swapped or left, spare planks and barrels traded off for grain and nails. One poor soul near wept over a fiddle he could not carry. “Leave it,” says I soft, “and you’ll play again on the far side.” But the look of him—ah well. The Sierra takes her toll before she lets a man through.
They speak of Carson’s Pass ahead—hard, but a true way over—no devil’s ladder, only stout pullin’ and a steady hand on the lines. We’ll double-team the worst pitches, keep water skins full, and not spare the chain on the hind axle when the grade turns wicked. The word in camp is go light, go early, and don’t linger on the crest, for the sky’s got a steel edge to it now, and October storms come quick to these stones.
For myself, I feel the hand at my back more than ever, pushin’ me west. I think on William and the little ones, and on the quiet in our yard back in Grant County, and I mind my steps. If the Lord grants us a fair day, we’ll step off before first light, rigs trimmed to the bone, and take the mountain slow and straight.
There’s gold-talk in every mouth, aye, but I’m past the hunger of it this night. What I want is the far side, green hills and a warm fire, and the sound of our oxen chewin’ easy in the dark. If that be Sutter’s country, then let it come. For now I’ll lay me down with the smell of pine smoke in my clothes and the stars hangin’ sharp over the black teeth of the ridge, and I’ll ask the saints to hold the snow till we’re across.
John William Campbell — Day 180
On the American River, near Sutter’s mill — October 18, 1849
We’ve dropped off the stone back o’ the Sierra at last and come among the piney hills where the air’s soft as butter by day and bites a touch at night. The river forks here like a beggar’s hand, every finger jammed with men and pans and boxes knock’d together from green timber. Saints preserve us, I have never seen the like.
It’s a Babel of tongues—Yankees roarin’, Cornishmen mutterin’, Chilenos singin’ under their breath, Chinamen quiet as cats, Kanakas laughin’ in the foam, Irish by the dozen if there’s one. The whole world’s tipped into this gulch. Trees go down with a crack like muskets; the lads rip flumes off the hillsides, turnin’ the streams sideways to chase a glimmer. The banks are trod to yellow paste, and when the rain comes—and it will—these roads’ll suck a boot clean off your foot.
I saw a man shoot an ox for want o’ beef, and another cut a stray cow that bore no brand he could show. There’s law on paper, I’m told, but out here it’s hunger and hammer that speak first. A fine stove left in the brush, a piano’s gut-ropes hangin’ from a wagon wreck, trunks burst open with books and dresses flappin’ in the dust—what the mountains did not take, greed and haste will finish.
Yet there’s a fever on the place would lift a corpse to its feet. A man rinses a pan and his hands shake—is it color or not? Another swears by a bar up yonder that paid an ounce to the pan at daybreak and not a speck by noon. We put up a shed of boughs and canvas, and I thanked the Lord for warm sun on my back and a dry fire under the kettle—no more white nights on the ridges, God willing.
I’ll not say I’m mad for gold. Not this night. I’m for steady work and sound gear, and for keepin’ my soul when the ground itself sings like a siren. But I’ll wash a pan come morning and see what Providence sets in the riffles. If there’s blessing in it, we’ll send word east; if not, I’ll take wages where I can and bide the season till the roads firm again.
For now, I’ll sleep to the hiss of the river and the far-off racket of men who think the kingdom of heaven lies in the bottom of a tin pan. May God keep our heads while the world tips.
Alan Campbell - Day 10
October 8, 2025
Dawn in Stockton, California. Fifty degrees. The kind of soft Central Valley morning where the air smells faintly of soil and irrigation water. Downstairs, the breakfast bar didn’t have much, but the eggs were remarkable—light, folded with peppers and a hint of cheese. The best of the trip. I lingered a moment over coffee, knowing the day would carry me toward the end of the long westward line.
Upstairs, I packed the bags and gear with practiced ease. The chain had picked up a blush of rust from Wyoming’s storms, so I’d lubed it the night before. Oil topped off. Trash cleared from the panniers. By 8:30, the bike and I rolled out into a Stockton morning already warming toward the high 50s.
East Union Cemetery — William C. Campbell
My first stop was East Union Cemetery, a short ride down the highway to Manteca, to visit the grave of William C. Campbell, the patriarch of the California branch of the family line and the older brother of John William Campbell. Unlike Stockton Rural Cemetery, East Union is small and quiet—you can see the whole grounds from the street corner.
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| William C. Campbell Stone |
I followed GPS coordinates from Find-a-Grave, and within a minute I was standing among the Reynolds family plot. Roughly 22 gravestones stood within a rectangular enclosure of about 35 by 17 feet, and nearly all bore the Reynolds name. At the far end lay William C. Campbell. It fit: both of his daughters had married Reynolds men, weaving the families together here in California soil.
I moved methodically through the plot, photographing every gravestone. The scene was peaceful: the sun slanting low across the markers, the grass trimmed, the air still. It was far removed from the windswept Platte or the granite heights of Carson Pass, but this was the end of the emigrant road—the destination that men like William Campbell carved into reality when they crossed the continent in 1870.
South Through the Central Valley
By late morning I was heading south, the highway unfurling through California’s great interior plain. For emigrants, this valley was a land of promise, though for many Forty-Niners it came only after months of thirst, hardship, and granite crossings. Here, water flowed easily, the soil was rich, and small towns grew rapidly after the Gold Rush turned to agriculture.
The weather was perfect until noon: cool, windless, easy miles. I stopped for lunch at the inevitable McDonald’s—the traveler’s equivalent of an emigrant trading post—and watched the temperature climb. By early afternoon it was 85°F, hotter than forecast, and the winds picked up across the wide valley floor.
Highway riding through California’s Central Valley can lull you into complacency: long straight lines, distant orchards, irrigation canals glinting in the sun. But the wind is always waiting somewhere up ahead.
Tehachapi Pass — California’s Wind Gate
By mid-afternoon, I approached Tehachapi Pass, the high wind gap that connects the Central Valley to the Mojave Desert. The pass is part of the Tehachapi Mountains, a transverse range that has always been both a barrier and a doorway.
Long before highways, this was a Native trade corridor, linking Yokuts communities in the valley with desert groups. After the Gold Rush, the pass became strategically vital: in 1876, the Southern Pacific Railroad completed its line through the Tehachapi Mountains, including the famous Tehachapi Loop, a 0.73-mile spiral where trains climb 77 feet by looping over themselves. It remains one of the engineering marvels of the American West.
For emigrants, Tehachapi wasn’t part of the Oregon or California Trail proper—it lay far south—but for modern travelers retracing westward migrations, it feels like a final symbolic threshold. Many Forty-Niners eventually drifted into the southern valleys as the mining frontier shifted and agriculture took hold.
The wind was waiting, as always. It wasn’t the worst I’d seen—nothing like that one brutal crossing years ago when I’d hunkered behind a truck to avoid being blown off the road—but it hit hard near the top. Temperatures dropped 20 degrees as I crested the summit. The pass funneled the air like a bellows.
And then, just as quickly, I descended into Santa Clarita, the edge of the Los Angeles basin. The heat returned, but muted. I rolled into a sprawling Best Western near Magic Mountain, three times the size of any I’d stayed in on this trip. I parked, covered the bike to keep curious eyes off it, and tucked the day away.
Reflections at the Edge
This was the penultimate day—the end of the line in sight. From the Platte River to the Sierra Nevada, from Devil’s Gate to Carson Pass, I had traced, mile by mile, the arc of a journey thousands made in wagons 175 years ago.
For William C. Campbell and his contemporaries, the road ended not in a hotel parking lot but in fields and graves—in the quiet certainty of having crossed a continent and staked a claim in a new world. Visiting his grave that morning brought that truth home. This wasn’t just a ride. It was a retracing of a migration.
Alan Campbell - Day 11
October 9, 2025 – Thursday - Santa Clarita
I woke around six in Santa Clarita, unhurried. The ride was almost over, and I knew it. Downstairs, I aimed to beat the breakfast crowd but ran into a different kind of morning army: construction crews, orange vests and hard hats filling the room like a road gang. They’d eaten nearly everything. Only a ragged piece of egg remained, which I claimed like the last scrap at a chuckwagon table.
Outside, the air was cool but not biting—around 50°F—the kind of Southern California morning that warms quickly under the sun. I lingered, watching the freeway pulse from a distance, trying to time my launch to miss the rush. At 8:30, I rolled out.
Traffic flowed smoothly at first. The bike hummed southward toward home. Then came the slowdown—the 210 through the upper hills, where four lanes inexplicably ground to a crawl. No merges. No accidents. Just the strange herd behavior of Southern California freeways. For twenty minutes, I crept forward, engines idling around me like cattle lowing in a narrow chute.
And then, as quickly as it began, the road opened. I rode through the basins and over low hills, the temperature rising, then falling again as clouds gathered over Orange County. By the time I reached the familiar streets, the air had cooled, almost threatening rain—a fitting echo of the mixed skies I’d crossed back in Wyoming.
At 10:45 a.m., I pulled up to the house. Silence. The engine clicked as it cooled. The odometer read 3,030.6 miles. Eleven days. Bolinbrooke, Illinois to Mission Viejo, California. The Oregon Trail and California Cutoff—not by ox and wagon, but by steel and throttle.
Epilogue
John William Campbell remained in California’s gold country for a few years. He eventually sailed to South America and stayed for a time and then continued on to New York City around 1865. There he married Ellen Whelan of Waterford, Ireland. Their first child, Ellen Jane Campbell, was born in 1866 in New York. After a brief return trip to Grant County, Wisconsin to visit his brother William Campbell, John moved to Florence Township, Stephenson County, Illinois, where he farmed for a period before retiring in 1870 to Freeport, Illinois. He continued to live in Freeport and had additional children—including Mary, another son William, and twins James and Anastasia—and he passed away in 1897.
William’s children married into three families. Anna and Saluda married the Reynolds twins. Mary and John married into the Bonham family. Jean married George Bremer. In 1879, John William Campbell (William’s son) killed his sister's husband George Bremer in a moment of passion and was sent to San Quentin for two years before receiving a gubernatorial pardon.
William Campbell's son John William Campbell passed away in 1938, being the last child of William to survive.
On this trip I confirmed that William Campbell is buried with two of his daughters in the Reynolds family plot at East Union Cemetery in Manteca, California, and that John William Campbell is buried in the Bonham plot at Stockton Rural Cemetery. John’s sister Mary is buried in Northern California with her husband.
From newspaper research, I found that the two Campbell families remained in contact over the years. After John William Campbell of Freeport died in 1897, his widow Ella visited Campbell relatives in California.
I greatly enjoyed the motorcycle ride retracing the California Cutoff and the Oregon Trail, visiting the towns and landscapes where both Campbell brothers lived in the 1800s. The journey deepened my understanding of our family—where we’ve been and how we came to be who we are.
Addendum - Fun Videos from the Ride
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