Page:Edward Ellis--Alden the Pony Express Rider.djvu/139



HE next look we take of the train under the guidance of Shagbark, the veteran of the plains, is several weeks after the incidents just described. The route which they in common with thousands of emigrants, including the Pony Express riders, followed, led due west up the Kearny valley to Julesburg, a distance of two hundred miles. Here it crossed the South Platte, trended northwest to old Fort Laramie, passed thence over the foothills at the foot of the Rockies to South Pass, and by way of Fort Bridger to Salt Lake.

You must bear several facts in mind. Colorado at the time of which I am writing had not yet been formed into a Territory, nor had Wyoming. The oldest white settlement in the latter section was Fort Laramie—since abandoned—which was made a trading post in 1834, rebuilt by the American Fur Company 129