Mud Springs, so-named for its seeps of water, was an oasis on the dry plateau between Lodgepole Creek and the North Platte River. Overland travelers began using the springs in the late 1850s when a…

Bridgeport, founded in 1900 as a station by the Burlington Railroad, celebrated its centennial in 2000. The town is located on or near many historic trails of the West, including the Oregon,…

Just north of here the Camp Clarke bridge crossed the North Platte River. The bridge was built in the spring of 1876 by entrepreneur Henry T. Clarke to improve the trail from the Union Pacific…

Courthouse and Jail Rocks are two of the most famous landmarks of westward migration. Nearby passed the Oregon-California Trail, the Mormon Trail, the Pony Express Trail and the Sidney-Deadwood Trail.…

On June 23, 1850, twenty-eight-year-old Amanda Lamme, a California-bound emigrant, died of cholera and was buried near here in what is now private pastureland. She was the wife of M.J. Lamme of Boone…

Narcissa Whitman, trail-blazer and martyred missionary, is one of the great heroines of the frontier West. In 1836 she and Eliza Spalding, following the north side of the Platte on horseback, became…

Rising 470 feet above the North Platte River Valley, Chimney Rock stands to the south as the most celebrated of all natural formations along the overland routes to California, Oregon, and Utah.…