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Wagon Train Nears Destination |
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Wednesday, 06 August 2008 |
By EMILY HONE
The Morning News
KUNA — The Oregon-California Trail Association wagon train that left Montpelier on July 8 with seven wagons bound for Nampa and the association's 25th National Convention pulled into Nampa on Monday, and Wagonmaster Dell Mangum was the only driver present who made the entire trip as he started:
Looking at the trail over the rumps of his Shire team, Nick and Tina Turner.
KUNA — The Oregon-California Trail Association wagon train that left Montpelier on July 8 with seven wagons bound for Nampa and the association's 25th National Convention pulled into Nampa on Monday, and Wagonmaster Dell Mangum was the only driver present who made the entire trip as he started:
Looking at the trail over the rumps of his Shire team, Nick and Tina Turner.
When reached by phone on Saturday, Mangum was just finishing the Kuna Days Parade in Kuna with his niece SheryAnn Lee, her husband, Aaron, daughter Annalynn, and 21-year-old nephew Michael Misha from Salt Lake City as riders.
"They came up from Salt Lake to ride with me the last couple of days," Mangum said. "There's maybe a day and a half of travel left but I expect to be at the Nampa Civic Center before sundown on Monday."
The Lee family left Salt Lake City when Aaron got off work at midnight Thursday and drove up to keep Mangum company, joining up with him at Mayfield and riding on the wagon to Kuna for the parade.
They planned to ride with him the rest of the day Saturday and return home on Sunday, but SheryAnn said it was the experience of a lifetime.
"It's amazing," she said enthusiastically. "The world looks different at this speed. The jingle of the harnesses and sound of horse hooves is music. You get a perspective of the land you couldn't get any other way."
Their reception by the parade watchers was also great, she said. "It was the older people, who probably had been around horses in their youth, and the little kids who seemed to enjoy seeing the wagon the most."
Her daughter's reaction alone would have been worth the trip, SheryAnn said. "Dell put her on one of the horses bareback and led it around Friday morning and she was so thrilled. As we were riding and she was watching the horses' hooves, she leaned against me and said, 'Oh mom, their feet look like they're dancing.' It was a great experience for a four-year-old."
Mangum said the people who started out with the train dropped off along the trail as their time to return to home and work came around. Janette Scott, a blind woman from Scotland who started the trek as a rider in his wagon, enjoyed the experience, Mangum said, but left the train at Craters of the Moon with a couple from Middleton and caught a plane from Boise.
"She had to get back home," he said.
Others riders joined for a couple of days at a time, but Mangum followed the trail of the pioneers alone for much of the distance until the Lees joined him at Mayfield.
He didn't mind a bit, Mangum said, as Nick and Tina Turner were pretty good company.
He expected a couple of the people who started out with him, including Jim Shane from Middleton, to rejoin him for the final leg of the trek, along with Neil Larsen of Blackfoot, who Mangum said planned to truck his team and wagon to Western Idaho.
Mangum started out with a spare team, but found they weren't needed and sent them home. Nick and Tina Turner made the trip in fine shape, he said, despite the hot days of pulling across Idaho's high desert.
During the convention at the Nampa Civic Center, participants will be immersed in the pioneer emigrant experience.
There will be presentations, workshops, bused tours of Oregon-California trail sites, a book room and unique entertainment to take people back in time to learn how the West was settled.
Convention subjects will include: Educating the young to appreciate historical resources; trail preservation; Indian-white relations; grave identification and preservation; the Goodale Cutoff in eastern Oregon; Ezra Meeker depiction; foods carried and used on the trail; plants used; emigrant inscriptions along the trail; documenting family and local history; firearms used; fur traders, trappers and mountain men in Idaho; trail stories and clothing worn on the trail.
Books on the history of the trails and some of the pioneers who traveled them will be available for purchase during the convention that ends on Aug. 9, and Mangum will load up his team and wagon and head for home.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 07 August 2008 )
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