Kevin – Thursday. My original plan was to stay at Ft Bridger another day and to work between Muddy Creek going halfway to Bear River. However, there doesn’t seem to be any ‘good’ route to take. A good portion would need to be hiked but the bigger problem … permission! None of my trail sources had provided any names or contact numbers. Like back at Glendo, we hadn’t been able to make any progress with finding owners. We were kind of stuck. With no permission, do we trespass and ask forgiveness later?
This little project is jointly sponsored by other groups; OCTA, Mormon Trails, Mormon Battalion, This is the Place Heritage Park. So, doing anything to besmirch relationships with those folks just isn’t something I’m going to do.
Waking up at 4 AM, I got to thinking we didn’t really have any GOOD reason to stay at Ft Bridger and we could backtrack from Bear River (Evanston) to see the 10-mile section we could have public road access to. Crazy routing in places, but yeah. That made sense.
When Denny arose, I discussed it with her and we decided to skip town. With only two hours to pack up we hustled and got it done.
As I was pulling up the I-80 west incline out of Ft Bridger, it occurred to me that Denny’s 3rd great-grandmother’s grave was something we needed to see before we left Muddy Creek. I had thought (at 4:15 AM) that we’d just backtrack on the public road and start from there. But, I was impressed we should do it NOW – not wait for later because who knows? We may not get back and this was something I needed to make sure we accomplished for Denny.
Without phone consultation, I pulled off at the truck stop and parked. Denny in the little car was obviously perplexed and parked beside me. I hopped out and jumped in with her and explained the revised plan. The wisdom was obvious so we headed back to Muddy Creek.
On our second try, we were able to find the memorial marker for Catherine Jones Bennett. It’s west across Muddy Creek and on private property but it’s obvious the site is open for folks to visit. There are walkways across the creek and a big sign indicating this was a camp site for Brigham Young’s group in July 1847.
There were at least two other memorial markers for people who had been buried in the area. There was a Pony Express station here and three markers of various types indicating that three historic trails (Pony, California and Mormon) came this way. The Oregon Trail took off either at Parting of the Ways or at Fort Bridger.
As we were taking our photos and Denny was video calling her relatives related to Catherine Bennett, back across the creek we saw six pickup trucks come down the turnout into the staging area. Out piled about 30 young men and their leaders. ‘Drats!’ we thought. We needed to hurry and get our photos before they arrived at the graves and composing a nice photo would get more difficult.
On they came and when they arrived the leader, Bishop Peterson from Evanston introduced himself and inquired about us and our reason for being there. Denny explained her relationship to Catherine. Bishop Peterson gave Denny a copy of the materials he had printed out for sharing stories with his young men.
When Bishop Peterson asked about what our plans were, I mentioned that we were going to have to skip the next 15 miles or so since we didn’t have any contacts for the property owners.
“Oh” said he. “This land with the graves belongs to my brother-in-law and his brother owns the next ranch over and they know all the people up here. Let me get their contact information for you.”
So, there you have it folks. At a place we didn’t plan on being at today and at a very specific half-hour window of time, we ‘just happen’ to meet someone who had the key to solving our access problem. Coincidence? Not in the Lord’s economy.
The rest of the day was lackluster after our inspiring morning. Denny and I kept breaking into wide grins, shaking our heads at the wonder of it all. We still do not know or understand the ‘big picture’ of what exactly this is trek effort may lead to, but we have seen too much and know there are higher purposes in play. All we can do is play our part.
