![]() ![]() Once you get to the ammo lid coordinates, you can navigate to a point at an azimuth of 255° and a distance of 505 feet to a natural saddle between two rock ridges. Over a thousand weary pioneers passed by this point in early October of 1853, in a few more miles they would reach the water they dearly craved. The Larkspur trail has been improved at this location recently and this work has raised the Larkspur and covered up a trace of the Elliott trail that existed prior to the new construction. The trail went under your feet and along the toe of the hill below the fallen tree. You will see, across the existing paved road, a large fallen Ponderosa pine tree. Larkspur runs north-south in this area and the 1853 trail ran east-west at this point. Get back on the Larkspur trail and walk along the trail to the ammo lid coordinates which are where the Larkspur trail crosses the 1853 trail. Find the cache, an ammo box off of the Larkspur Trail, and enter into your GPS unit the latitude/longitude written on the inside lid of the ammo box. The cache is not at the location of the 1853 trail. The location of this portion of the trail was determined by 1871 General Land Office (GLO) survey notes and 1951, 19 aerial photos. The next year William Macy lead 125 wagons and hundreds of settlers over the same route. They finally made contact with Willamette Valley settlers and an immense rescue effort was mounted to rescue the emigrants. This was 6 years after the Donner Party ordeal in which nearly half of the emigrants starved to death and a feeling of hopelessness and doom descended upon the Elliotts. As they attempted to cross the Cascades, they found that the road builders had not cleared the trees which had been fallen (the road builder had defaulted on his contract), and were impeded by downed timber, multiple river crossings, early winter snows and lack of provisions. Some accounts state that a woman member of the train died and was buried near a large Ponderosa pine next to the Deschutes in the Bend area.Īfter recuperating for a few days on the Deschutes, the Elliotts headed south, skirted the eastern flank of Lava Butte, crossed through the Upper Meadows of the Deschutes (now known as Sunriver) and continued south to the La Pine area where they found trees blazed by the road building party from Eugene. ![]() In the desert east of Bend some of the cattle, maddened by thirst, broke for water and ended up scattered along both the Deschutes and Crooked Rivers. Before arriving at the Deschutes River the wagons traveled 75 miles without water. This route left the Oregon trail near Vail and followed the disastrous 1845 Meek route (see GCG3FW by sskamp) into the Harney Lake area and then westerly to the future site of Bend on the Deschutes River. In 1853 the Elijah Elliott Wagon train, comprised of 250 wagons and over 1000 immigrants, attempted an ill-fated shortcut off of the standard Oregon Trail. However, if your squint your eyes you may be able to filter out today’s improvements and distractions for a brief moment and imagine what the raw, lonesome landscape looked like to the pioneers who traveled these roads. At most of these locations you will not see any signs of the original wagon roads. The purpose of the Wagon’s Ho! series is to introduce interested parties, through the magic of geocaching, to locations where early day wagon roads once crossed our now very urbanized landscape. ![]()
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