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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings

HISTORIC PLACES associated with the mining, ranching, and farming frontiers—with the prospector, cowhand, and sodbuster—are spread across the vast open face of the trans-Mississippi West. They are usually as separated by great distances as are the towns that dot the endless horizon—with its wide plains, open sky, rugged mountains, sparkling streams, and arid stretches. This land, which both thwarted and nurtured the pioneers, is itself the greatest monument of all to their individualistic efforts.

The face of the land reflects what man has done. The prospector and miner left the most enduring physical remains because the nature of their operations required more extensive structures than did those of the rancher and the farmer. Remains of the mining frontier are distributed throughout 12 of the States in the trans-Mississippi West—Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Many of them are in villages that are no longer inhabited—ghost towns whose dusty streets are flanked by weatherbeaten, unpainted structures that were used by the thousands who eagerly rushed to each discovery in the hope of finding quick riches.

It is impossible to list or even locate more than a fraction of all the mines that once yielded fortunes, or all the towns that sprang up in the vicinity of such mines. In the gold-mining region of California alone, more than 500 towns were probably established in the period 1848-60, of which more than half have disappeared, even from maps. Time has done the same damage to the towns that it has to the sluice boxes, machinery, and cabins that dotted the vicinity of each camp. A prominent feature of the landscape is the debris left behind—mile after mile of stark and unsightly waste, mounds of boulders lining the streams and canyons, and the colorless rockpiles spewed out by countless dredges.

Some mining towns have continued to the present, and a few are today prosperous modern cities. Others have continued their existence as lumbering towns, trading centers, or cowtowns. Those that have become ghost towns vary widely in their state of preservation. Because of widespread interest, as well as local pride, in the relics of the frontier mining days, the preservation of individual structures, groups of buildings, even entire towns is done on a wide scale—by State park commissions, towns, municipalities, individuals, and private foundations. At least one well-preserved town is located in almost every important mining State in the West.

In contrast to the prospectors and miners, the ranchers and sodbusters left few material remains. The pioneer ranchers built a limited number of structures, for their investment was in cattle and their natural resources were grass and water. Much of their range, now fenced, is little changed in appearance from the time they first saw it, although Herefords and other breeds of cattle have replaced the distinctive Longhorns. Fortunately for those interested in the history of the West, the Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, maintains two representative herds of Texas Longhorns: one at the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge near Cache, Okla., and the other at the Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge near Valentine, Nebr. The two herds contain about 500 animals. Both of the refuges are open to the public.

Few cowtowns today give much indication that they once welcomed the boisterous cowboy at the end of the long drive. Thrown up hurriedly, many of them have long since disappeared. Others have destroyed all traces of the early days as they have modernized. The same is true of the original ranch headquarters of the great cattle spreads. The early buildings were rudimentary and most of them did not even survive the era of the range cattle industry. As the cattlemen lost parts of their vast landholdings, they often abandoned the old headquarters. Most of the buildings that have survived have been modernized to provide more comfortable living quarters than the early cattlemen enjoyed.

The famous cattle trails—the Chisholm, the Western, the Goodnight-Loving, and the Shawnee—were dug out by the hooves of millions of Texas cattle. Most traces of them have long since disappeared. Almost the only surviving remains are of the forts that served as way stations for the drivers and their herds. Fort Gibson, Okla., Fort Griffin, Tex., Fort Belknap, Tex., and Fort Sumner, N. Mex.—names familiar to thousands of cowboys—today are preserved as visitor attractions.

As for the ranchers, few physical evidences remain of the activities of Western farmers. Pioneers reached valleys untouched by man, farmed a year or two, moved on because of advancing civilization or in a search for more fertile fields, and left little of permanence behind. Because of the nature of the land and his rudimentary tools, the frontier farmer could cultivate only on a limited scale. He built the bare minimum—a rude shelter and barn—so that when he moved on little was left except the land. Such structures as the sod house, built by most homesteaders on the Plains, did not last long; and wild grass soon re-covered the plowed fields. Today, when agriculture has become a mechanized big business, it is difficult to find anywhere in the agricultural belt west of the Mississippi a farmstead that bears much resemblance to one in the days of the homesteader.

Unfortunately no attempt has been made to re-create the life of the pioneer farmer of the West on a scale such as is being done at the Farm Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y. Popular interest in the agricultural phase of Western history has never been great. Writers have seldom seen fit to romanticize the life of the farmer, as they have those of the cowboy, gunman, miner, and mountain man.