"PANEL 1: LONG EXPEDITION, 1820
In 1820, Major Stephen H. Long trekked to the Rocky Mountains seeking the headwaters of the Platte, Arkansas, and Red rivers. When his 22-man party passed through area on July 9, the men marveled at the lush mountain scenery and spectacular landforms of the area. On July 12, the expedition paused near present-day Colorado Springs long enough for botanist Edwin James to scale Pikes Peak - declared "unclimbable" by Zebulon Pike only fourteen years before. Long never found the headwaters he sought, but the many species of plant life he collected busied scientists for years and his description of the Great Plains as a "Great American Desert" forever fixed itself upon the American mind.
A DELIGHTFUL DISCOVERY
"We are delighted with our first entrance of what we may now call the Arkansas country - cool water from the mountain, numberless beaver dams and lodges. Naturalists find new inhabitants, the botanist is at loss which new plant he will first take in hand - the geologist grand subjects for speculation - the geographer and topographer all have subjects for observation."
Journal Entry of Capt. John R. Bell, Long Expedition, July 10, 1820.
Graphic: Sketch of Area near present-day Larkspur
On July 10, expedition artist Samuel Seymour sketched "Insulated Table Lands," today known Collectively as Larkspur Butte, Corner Mountain, and Nemrick Butte, just east of this rest area.
Colorado Historical Society
Graphic: Columbine
Botanists on the Long Expedition found the Rocky Mountain Columbine, now Colorado's state flower, at Palmer Lake
Graphic: Sketch of Raspberry Butte
"Hills of the Trap Formation," by Samuel Seymour, is present Raspberry Butte, seen to the southwest.
Beinecke Library, New Haven, Connecticut
PANEL 2: MOUNTAIN MEN
TRAPPER'S TRAIL
Your journey along I-25 between present Pueblo and Greeley follows a centuries-old trail. Native peoples, Spanish and French explorers, American trappers - all used it at various times. By the 1840s most westerners knew it as the "Trappers' Trail," named for the storied mountain men who trapped in this region from the 1820s and moved frequently between Bent's Old Fort on the Arkansas River to fur posts on the South Platte.
A BREED APART
They wandered the uncharted Rocky Mountains, they went in harm's way, and they captured the imagination of Americans, then and now. But the mountain men were neither so free nor so independent as their legend insists. They toiled at the end of a long economic chain that stretched from the icy beaver ponds of the Rockies to the uncertain fashion markets of New York and London. Then in the 1840s, the supply of beaver ran out, and hat fashion changed from fur to silk. Suddenly, the day of the mountain men was done. Kit Carson became a guide, Jim Baker a rancher, and Thomas Fitzpatrick an Indian agent. Others were unable to fit in, forever of the move, always on the fringe of society, misfits to the end.
Graphic: Painting of a Mountain Man
"Captain Joseph Reddeford Walker," by Alfred Jacob Miller, 1837.
Joslyn Museum of Art, Omaha, Nebraska
Graphics: Portraits of Famous Mountain Men
Christopher "Kit Carson" (1809-1868), Jim Baker (1818-1898), and Thomas "Broken Hand" Fitzpatrick (1790-1854)
Colorado Historical Society
PANEL 3: WILDLIFE, THEN & NOW
1820 -- ENDLESS BOUNTY
Expedition members recorded a landscape bigger than they imagined, hundreds of new insects and plants, and sixty new or rare animals.
These explorers and later travelers on the Trappers Trail must have seen this country and its bounties as endless. They could no more have imagines the present than we can imagine their first impressions.<.
2020 -- UNCERTAIN FUTURE
As you retrace this historic route, try to imagine the scene in 1820.
Today, you see a quilt of open spaces and development. Bison no longer spread across the hills and prairie. Once common here, the plains sharp-tailed grouse is now an endangered species. Both these species require the continuous expanse of open land known only to early travelers.
Now, this landscape enters a new era in local history - that of swift and modern settlement. Unlike the early explorers, today's settlers must imagine the limits of our resources. Learning to live with wildlife and making careful planning decisions will protect something of this region's wild heritage for the future.
Whether living in Colorado or elsewhere, we all face this common challenge.
Journal Entries of Captain John R. Bell, 1820
"We are, where, imagination, only has traveled before us - where civilization never existed."
"Large herds of bison were seen in every direction, but as we had already killed a deer and were supplied with meat enough for the day, none of the party were allowed to go in pursuit of them."
Graphic: Painting of Bison in Area near present-day Colorado Springs "Bison Heard with Pikes Peak in Background," Titian Ramsay Peale Glenbow Collection, Calgary, Canada" (from (
visit link) )