of the ruts, your car acted as if it were drunk. It slid, zigzagged,
slithered, first headed for one ditch, and then slewed across the road.
It acted as if bewitched. We had passed several cars abandoned in the
ditch, and those ahead of us, even with chains on, were doing a new
version of a fox trot. The road grew worse, the mire deeper. The ruts
were now so deep that we just crawled along, and, to prevent getting
stalled, we pulled out of them. In a shorter time than it takes to
write it, our left front wheel was down in the ditch and the car lying
across the road, and stuck fast. That was all that prevented us from
being ditched. There we were, unable to move. We had not tried to walk
in gumbo. That was an added experience. All three of us got out to see
what _could_ be done. It would be impossible to jack the car up there
and put on the chains; the jack would have sunk out of sight. And no
car could pass us. Your feet stuck in the gumbo so that when you pulled
up one foot a mass of mire as large as a market-basket stuck to it,
or your shoe came off, and you frantically slid and floundered around
until you got it on again. We thought of a dozen clever things to do,
_if_ we could only have walked. There was a farmhouse half a mile
ahead where no doubt we could have hired a team to pull us out. But
how could we get there? My sympathies are all with the fly caught on
sticky flypaper! In a short time, a Dodge car came up back of us, a man
driving it, with his wife, his son, a boy of fifteen, and a small girl.
Being a light car in comparison, and having chains on, they fared
better; but they could not pass. They offered to pull us back onto
the road. Fortunately we had brought a wire cable with us. This was
attached to both cars, and then both tried to back. Did we budge? No
such luck! All hands got to work, sliding around like drunken sailors,
and filled in back of our wheels with stones, sticks, cornstalks, and
dry grass. After being stuck there just one hour, we got back onto the
road and into the ruts, and slowly we crawled up to the top of a hill,
where some guiding angel had scattered ashes and sand. We got to a dry,
grassy spot, where a sadder and wiser driver put on the chains. How did
we get there, Toodles and I? Those blessed Dodge people _invited_ us
to stand on their running-boards while they crawled up the hill. Later
we overtook them having tire troubles, and we were glad to be able to
return their kindness. The next lovely job was to clean our shoes.
Nothing can stick worse than gumbo, and we had been soaked in it.
Needless to say that our shoes were ruined, but we were lucky it was
not the car.
So, with care, and crawling about five miles an hour, still slipping
and sliding like eels, we covered the forty miles into Jamestown.
The hotel dining-room was closed, and we had supper in a Chinese
restaurant, then went to have our shoes cleaned in what had been
before July 1st a typical Western saloon. It was filled with miners
and cowboys playing billiards, and a villainous automatic piano
playing rag-time. We sat up in the chairs while a “China-boy” dug at
the gumbo, now hard as stone. One Westerner stood there taking us all
in, and drawled, “You folks must have struck gumbo.” We had; but then
again--“It might have been worse.”
IX
THE BAD LANDS--“NATURE’S FREAKIEST MOOD”
From now on we experienced the real thrills, the discomforts, and
the wonders of our trip. Will the Eastern people (or the rest of our
country) ever realize the debt of gratitude that we owe to those
early pioneers--the men who blazed the trails across the wilderness,
suffering every privation, facing inconceivable dangers, and many dying
of cold and starvation? As we studied our map and saw those hundreds of
miles ahead of us, through the bad lands, over the dry Montana plains,
through the desert, and over the Rocky Mountains, I admit that it
seemed like the end of the world, and a million miles from home--almost
a foolhardy undertaking! Then we felt ashamed of ourselves. With a good
car, and all of us in prime condition, we left old gumbo and fears
behind, and made a fresh start. The big towns are one hundred miles
apart. Governor H. had told us not to stop in Bismarck, a fine big
city, but to go across the Little Missouri River to Mandan, sixteen
miles farther on. Bismarck’s fine hotels and cement pavements were a
great temptation to stop, but our hopes were more than realized. This
river, like all of these Western rivers, once navigable by big boats,
was so low that teams were driving across in many places. When we
reached the ferry we found a tiny steamer with paddle-wheels at the
stern waiting for us. It held two small cars beside ours. On the other
side a corduroy road had been built out over what had been the bed of
the river at least a quarter of a mile, so that the ferry could land.
The rest of the way was through pine woods.
Mandan is a beautiful city, with the new Lewis and Clark Hotel, owned
by Governor H. It was crowded, but when we showed the clerk Governor
H.’s signature we were given his private suite. Remember that we had
been coming over the plains for a hundred miles, and you can share our
joy to walk into a Fifth Avenue hotel, with a Ritz-Carlton suite to
revel in. This was where extremes met. It was wonderful that it was so
beautiful. It was really more wonderful that it was there at all.
The next day we went through another hundred miles of cattle and
grain ranches. We were told that these towns, a hundred miles apart,
had been trading-posts and stage-stops in the early days. Dickinson,
Glendive, Miles City, and Billings, Montana, are all fine, thriving
cities--excellent modern hotels, wide paved streets, fine churches,
stores, office buildings, and theaters, not overlooking the movie
houses. In passing, I wish to speak of the movies--a national,
educational institution, to be reckoned with. If we were not too dead
tired after a scrub, change of clothes, and dinner, we went to a movie
and saw excellent pictures and the world’s doings to date. Usually
there were plenty of electric fans, and always one big “paddle” fan
_outside_ the front entrance. This we found the case with banks, office
buildings, and shops. (Solve that if you can!) In many dozens of
canaries were singing a jubilee. There was always a large clock in full
view of the audience--another sensible idea. These cities were equipped
with every modern device and invention. They claimed your admiration
and deserved your unstinted praise. It was almost impossible to believe
that the next morning, ten minutes after you left the pavements, you
would again be out on the prairies, and perhaps meet no one for hours.
At Dickinson, North Dakota, we found the St. Charles Hotel very good.
We had been told to have lunch the next day in Medora, at the Rough
Riders Hotel, one of the few buildings left of the early cowboy days.
The town is nothing--a new school and store and a handful of old
buildings. It is quite near the ranch where Colonel Roosevelt lived
for two years. They instantly tell you that with real pride, for
these people loved the man as they knew him. Like the buffalo, the
picturesque cowboy is almost extinct. On the big cattle ranches we
saw _near_ cowboys--boys in their teens herding the cattle, and some
ordinary, dirty-looking men on horses. There were half a dozen men
eating noon dinner at the hotel(?), a tumble-down old building about as
romantic as any old woodshed. One grizzly old fellow was pointed out
as having been a guide for the Colonel. The place was dirty, the food
impossible, greasy and cold, and the few bullet-holes in the far-famed
bar were not sufficient to make this member of the party rave over the
place. It seemed like a travesty, or a ghost of some former existence.
You _may_ infer that we did not care for Medora!
For the next hour we climbed steadily up, the roads growing narrow and
rocky and full of chuck-holes. Everything that is rough and bad going
in the Far West is “chucky,” and we were soon to get acquainted with
_real_ chuck-holes. Presently we came out on a plateau, and before us
lay the Bad Lands of North Dakota. You may read of them, see pictures
of them, or see them from a train, but you have never really seen their
wonder, their grotesquely beautiful grandeur, until you stand in their
midst as we did. High cliffs, deep canyons, queer formations of stone
and earth that look like great castles or human heads. Again they
resemble mushrooms of mammoth size, in all colors--gray, pink, orange,
black, greens of a dull hue (not from the verdure, for there is none to
speak of), yellows, and even purplish and chalky white. Here again you
can see the outline of some giant creature, as if it had been carved in
a prehistoric age. We are told that the sea once covered these lands.
You can plainly see the ridges, like a rock on the ocean shore where
the water has receded. I suppose they are called the Bad Lands because
they are arid and nothing will grow. They are the wonderlands of this
country--geological wonders, left from some glacial period before the
foot of man trod the earth. No pen can adequately describe that scene;
no brush could do justice to its weird beauty. The stillness of death
reigned. Not a bird or a living creature did we see. The way winds
around these strange cliffs, now up a steep incline, where you look
down at the road below, again in the bottom of a ravine or chuck-hole,
and you wonder how you could drive the car either down or up again.
“Did you ever see anything like this, anywhere?”
“No, but it looks like what I imagine the bottom of hell must look
like.”
All that day we drove in and out, with an ever-changing panorama of
fantastic shapes and colors. We were awed, thrilled to our very marrow,
and even now, weeks later, as I write of it, I realize that my hands
are cold. Believe me, my friends, this is the acid test of driving.
If you qualified, well and good; but if you lost your nerve or your
head--a long good-night, and a perfectly good funeral! Glendive,
Montana, and the comfortable Jordan Annex looked human and mighty good
to us that night. We all admitted that we were scared half to death.
But, oh, the wonder and majesty of that sight! We blessed our good car,
we blessed our Maker, and we slept as if we had been drugged.
X
THE DUST OF MONTANA
Poor Montana! Burned, scorched to ashes from four summers of drought,
and no rain in six months! Everywhere the people told us the same
story. The rivers and streams were dry as bones. “Don’t stop here for
water” was a familiar sign. We met hundreds of families driving out,
in old “prairie-schooners,” with all their household furniture and
their cattle. These poor souls had to find water for their cattle and
themselves. They had tried to raise crops, and were literally driven
out. The children looked pinched and starved. The women and men were
the color of leather, tanned by the scorching sun of the plains, the
dust, and the dry, hot winds. They had lost everything. Their faces
were pathos personified. It wrung your heart to see them. We always
slowed down and waved to them, and often stopped and talked. It was
rare to get a smile from even the children. When we would give some
little kiddie an orange, it was the pathetic mother who tried to
smile. Before we had covered the four hundred miles across the state,
our faces were burned, our lips so dry and cracked that they bled, and
our eyes nearly burned out of our heads. Yet we had but a few days of
it, and they had suffered for four summers! At night we would soak our
hands and faces in cold cream, but the next night they were quite as
bad. The dust was from six to eight inches deep, and the roads were
either through sand or chucky. We know now why Lohr named his song “My
Little Gray Home in the West.” It could not possibly have been any
other color. A dozen times we thought our springs were gone. The road
looked like a level stretch of dust; then down you would go to the
bottom of a chuck-hole with a thud that made your teeth chatter.
The cattle looked as starved as the people. We came to one valley that
had been irrigated, and for a mile or so the crops were green. The
ditch was full of water--real _wet_ water. Horses and cows, dogs and
people were standing in it. We filled our radiator and bottles and
laved our hands and faces. Germs or no germs, we drank our fill. In
half an hour or less your throat and mouth would be as dry as ashes,
and your thirst was insatiable. We found that fruit, especially oranges
and pears, quenched the thirst better than water; so we always kept
plenty of fruit in the car. The going was so bad that we did not reach
Miles City until late. After leaving Fargo, each morning we had taken
the precaution to wire ahead for reservations, always adding “driving,”
so, if we were belated, the rooms would still be held for us. We had
been told that the Olive Hotel at Miles City was the only poor hotel on
the route. Everyone had given it a black eye. We had mentioned it to
the manager at the Jordan Annex in Glendive. “I think you will find it
very comfortable. Our company has taken it over and refurnished it.”
When we were sending our usual morning wire, he very politely said that
it would be _his_ pleasure to notify them of our coming.
To digress for a moment--the people of Montana pride themselves on
their universal courtesy to strangers. Time and again, we had people
say, “You have found our people polite and obliging?”--“Yes; they are
kindness itself”--and they were.
When we reached the Olive Hotel we were agreeably surprised.
Everything was clean and comfortable, looking like Paradise after the
dust and scorching sun of the plains. We were having our lunches put up
by the hotel each morning, as there was absolutely nothing decent en
route (shades of Medora!). I asked for the manager, Mr. Murphy.
“We shall be glad to put you up a lunch,” he said. “What would you
like?”
“Anything but _ham_ sandwiches. We have been so fed up on them
that we can’t look a pig in the face for fear we will see a family
resemblance.” Then I added, “May the bread be cut thin, and buttered?”
He laughed and assured us that it would be “all right.” Right! Ye
gods, we had a feast! Oh, how we have blessed dear Mr. Murphy! May his
shadow never grow less! As we were starting in the morning the head
waitress came out with the lunch neatly done up, saying, “Mr. Murphy
has had some extras put in. We like Easterners and try to please
tourists.” We paid the modest price of $2.50 (for three people) and
decided to curb our curiosity until noon. This was a _real_ occasion,
and just the proper spot must be found for our party. Some days we had
driven many miles to find a clump of trees to lunch under. Today we
went ten miles and never even saw a tree--the deadly monotony of the
endless plains--heat, dust, sand, sagebrush the color of ashes, and
only a jolly little prairie-dog scurrying to his hole or a hawk flying
overhead. Not a tree--not even a big bush to give shade! We asked some
ranchers where they got wood for fuel. “There ain’t no wood. Every
fellow digs his coal in his own backyard.” It sounded simple, and I
was glad to hear that nature had provided some compensations for the
farmer, whose life at the best is not all “beer and skittles.”
On we drove until one o’clock--and still no trees! A wail from Toodles:
“What about having lunch in the car?” There was a bend in the road over
the top of a hill. “I have a hunch that there will be a tree around
the bend,” ventured the bird-man. There was!--just one big, glorious
cottonwood tree that would shelter a drove of cattle, and the only
tree in sight on those plains as far as the eye could see. Out came
the faithful old rug and the hamper--and then we unpacked the lunch!
Three juicy melons, a whole broiled chicken for each one, thin bread
and butter, a jar of potato salad, fresh tomatoes, three jars of
marmalade, eggs, crisp lettuce, pickles, and the best chocolate-cake I
ever tasted, besides peaches, pears, and hot coffee. You may think we
were a lot of greedy pigs, but that was the banner lunch of the trip.
May Mr. Murphy never go hungry! He has made three friends for life.
Miles City is the last and best of the representative “cow-towns” of
early days. The annual “round-up,” a celebration of frontier days, is
usually held on the 4th of July. Here our watches went back an hour. We
were now in the land of silver dollars. It had been some years since we
had seen them in New York. Out here, when you had a bill changed, you
received nothing but silver dollars. A bit heavy, but all right, if you
had enough of them.
That night we reached Billings. We had gone through some fertile
ranches where the irrigation system had turned an arid waste of sand
into fields of green crops. The country improved, as we neared this
“Metropolis of Midland Empire,” as they term it, the center of the
sugar-beet industry. Wherever we saw crops, there the sugar-beet
flourished. They must raise many thousands of tons of them. The fair
grounds and elaborate buildings are of interest. It is a real city
rising out of the plains, like a living monument to the pioneers,
men and women. The Northern Hotel was the finest we had seen since
leaving the Twin Cities. We rested up for a day, had the car cleaned
and oiled, and had ourselves laundered, shampooed, and manicured,
starting refreshed and full of expectations on our last lap to the
Yellowstone. In contrast to the Olive Hotel, our lunch here was the one
real “hold-up” in any hotel. Six eggs, six tongue sandwiches, and four
cups of coffee were $3.75. We protested, and they deducted seventy-five
cents.
We had heard pleasing reports of Hunter’s Hot Springs being the French
Lick of the West; anything that spelled _water_ sounded good to us,
although we had crossed the upper Yellowstone River only to see a
little stream so low that the cattle were standing in the middle.
There is nothing but the hotel--not even a garage. All the cars were
parked in front and stood there all night. The place was crowded with
tourists from all over the country. “Hello there!” greeted us, and to
our surprise and great pleasure we found our cousins, Mr. and Mrs. H.,
of Fargo, with the glad tidings that she would go through the park with
us. This place is unique--a low, rambling building, with a quarter of a
mile of porches, a very large swimming pool of mineral water, hot from
the springs, and private baths of all descriptions. The big plunge had
been emptied and scrubbed, and the hot water was pouring in, but would
not be sufficiently cool to swim in for another day.
Many charming people were here, taking the course of baths, resting, or
just stopping en route, as we were. One celebrity was presented to us,
the youthful editor of “Jim Jam Jems,” Mr. Sam H. Clark, of Bismarck,
North Dakota, and his attractive wife. There were other ladies in his
party, all going to the park. They were attired in the costume of khaki
breeches, puttees, and coats, looking very Western and comfortable.
We remarked that we were unfortunate, in never having seen a copy
of “Jim Jam Jems.” “You surprise me; it is on sale at six hundred
news-stands in New York City.” Feeling like mere worms, we expressed
the hope of seeing it in San Francisco. On our arrival, we asked for
it at the news-stand in one of the largest hotels. “We get it only
about once in two months,” we were told. Later we found the September
issue, which we read with interest. In the “Monthly Preamble” he says,
“Fact is, this good old U. S. A. seems to have slipped its trolley,
politically, industrially, and socially, and generally things be out
of joint.” That seemed to be the tone of the whole publication. I do
not know the particular significance of the name of his magazine; but
if he ever decided to make a change I wonder if he would consider “The
Knocker Club in Session.” Mr. Clark is a reformer in embryo, and his
talents are unquestioned. Perhaps, in the broad-minded, open West, he
will in time find something _con_structive to write about. Let us watch
and see.
After a very jolly visit, all too short, we started for Livingston
and Gardiner, the northern entrance to the park. The sky was dense
with smoke, due to the forest fires in the north. In Oregon a town had
been wiped out the day before. Our eyes smarted from the smoke; the
mountains, now the foothills of the Rockies, were entirely obliterated,
and, if this kept up, we could see nothing in the park. Cars were
turning back, and the prospect was not encouraging. The road grew
more steep and narrow, and we could hardly see a quarter of a mile
ahead of us. It was like a real London fog--pea soup. The altitude
was very high, and we began to feel dizzy. We were on roads that were
just shelves cut in the sides of the mountains, with hardly room for
two cars to pass and a good long tumble on the lower side. It was not
pleasant! On a clear day perhaps, but not in a dense fog.
Passing through Livingston, you turn due south for fifty-five miles.
At four o’clock we arrived at Gardiner, where we had a belated lunch
at a restaurant, and found a collection of five weeks’ mail at the
post-office. Joy!--and then more joy! We all wired home to anxious
relatives of our arrival. The huge stone arch forms the gateway to the
park. The officials, old army veterans, in uniform, stopped us and we
paid $7.50 entrance fee for the car. There is no tax for people. We
were questioned about firearms. None are allowed, and we had none.
XI
A WONDERLAND
As Joaquin Miller said of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, “Is any fifty
miles of Mother Earth as fearful, or any part as fearful, as full of
glory, as full of God?” That is the Yellowstone National Park!
So much has been written of its wonder and beauty that it is “carrying
coals to Newcastle” for me to add any description. It beggars
description! None of us had visited it before; so the experiences
were doubly interesting, and these facts we had forgotten, if we had
ever known them: In 1872, Congress made this a national park. It is
sixty-two miles long and fifty-four miles wide, giving an area of
3348 square miles in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, and is under the
supervision of the National Park Service of the Interior Department.
The entire region is volcanic; you are impressed by a sense of nearness
to Nature’s secret laboratories.
The park is open from June 20th to September 15th. It is estimated that
sixty thousand visitors have enjoyed the splendors of the park this
year (1919). We reached there August 20th, at the height of the tourist
season. On entering, we drove five miles in a dense smoke along the
Gardiner River to Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel. There we spent our first
night and held a “council of war.” If the smoke did not lift, we could
see nothing and would have to wait. Of course, we intended to drive
our car through the park! After looking the situation over and talking
with other tourists, we decided to go in the Government cars, for three
reasons: First, whoever drove could see nothing of the scenery--you had
to keep your eye on the road every moment, as the ways were so steep,
with hundreds of sharp curves; second, we were unaccustomed to the very
high altitude, an average of eight thousand feet, all were feeling
dizzy (one of the ladies had a severe nosebleed), and no “light-headed”
driver was safe in handling a car on those roads; third, if you are
familiar with the routes, or follow the Government cars and get their
dust, all right; if not, you will get off the main roads in no time.
The Government has very comfortable White cars, holding eleven and the
driver. All the roads are officially inspected daily, and the drivers
are expert. You buy a motor ticket for twenty-five dollars, and that
ends your responsibility. You have unlimited time at the hotels, if you
so desire; otherwise, the trip is made in three days, with ample time
to see everything, and even to take side trips.
There were three hotels open this season--the Mammoth Hot Springs,
Old Faithful, and the Grand Canyon. They are run exclusively on
the American plan, at six dollars a day, with good food and every
comfort. A private bath is two dollars extra; with two in a room, four
dollars, or, if the bath adjoins two rooms, with two in each room,
it is two dollars each, or the modest sum of eight dollars. We found
that the tourists in the Government cars were cared for first in the
dining-room and always had good rooms reserved for them. This is quite
a consideration in the rush season. Thus with your motor ticket of
twenty-five dollars, your full three days’ hotel bill at six dollars
a day, including side trips, tips, etc., the park can be seen in
absolute comfort for fifty dollars, with nothing to worry about. As we
had been driving the car so steadily for six weeks, the relaxation
was very acceptable. The three hotels are quite different. The Mammoth
Hot Springs is a big barn of a place in appearance, lacking home
atmosphere, but warms up a bit in the evening when dancing begins.