For the past couple of days, we have been travelling the route of the pioneers. The pioneers called this part of our nation the Great American Desert. Six hundred miles of flat, open prairie with little to engage your mind on the difficult trek. A team of oxen could only travel 12-15 miles each day. Disease, starvation and hardship dogged the travellers. The trail was littered with the carcasses of animals, people and the valuables that were no longer worth the trouble. It wasn't all bad. One traveller spoke of the great library left along the way. He could pick up a book, read it and leave it when finished only to pick up another.

After leaving Scottsbluff, our next stop was Minden, a small town of about 3000 people. Years ago, Harold Warp, a local boy who had made it big in plastics, started seeing what he could do to save some of the places which were important to him as a boy. His boyhood school was going to be auctioned. He purchased the school and started his quest to preserve a number of the important historic buildings and other items into what became his Pioneer Village.

Because of our late arrival and subsequent work setting up our camp, I needed to take a rest before tackling the Pioneer Village. About noon, we had lunch at the restaurant there with the facility. Their special, a hot roast beef sandwich smothered in gravy and with mashed potatoes was so good that we came back that evening and I ordered it again.

Minden seems sort of depressed and the museum looked like it was a bit long in the tooth. Most of the employees and volunteers were elderly and it looked like an overwhelming task to keep up the buildings, plethora of antique cars, tractors, buggies, planes and other modes of transport. The kids have been wonderfully open to soaking in each of the experiences encountered. Once again, we picked out our favorite buggies/stagecoach;planes and automobiles The park itself features an old fort, a sod house, old schoolhouse, a general store, blacksmith shop, Pony Express station with accompanying stables; and another great old train. My favorite was the Pony Express station and stables.

The Pony Express was an amazing accomplishment which only existed for about a year and a half until telegraph lines were installed along the same route. Twenty riders were hired to carry the mail between St. Joseph’s Missouri and Sacramento, California. (One of the riders was Buffalo Bill Cody, joining up at the tender age of fifteen.) The stations were located at 15 mile intervals where a rider picked up fresh mounts at each new location.

I liked the saddle design, although the riders themselves felt them a bit harsh. It consisted mainly of a simple tree and a leather overskirt with pouches which the rider could quickly pull from one tree and place on the saddle tree atop his fresh horse. The accomplishments of the Pony Express were quite astonishing. They rode over 650,000 miles and during their brief tenure lost only one delivery of mail, only one rider was killed, and only one deliver was late.

One building featured interesting dioramas of kitchens, living rooms and bedrooms divided into periods starting in the 1830’s and extending forward to the 1980’s. Kira especially enjoyed this display and was fascinated with the changing look and technologies. In this building, women were weaving rag rugs and spinning yarn. The woman spinning allowed each of the kids to take a turn spinning on a 150 year old spinning wheel.

We found there was a public pool so from 5:30 to 7:00pm, the kids made some new friends and had a nice swim. Me, too! It felt good to jump in and wash off the days mugginess plus it gave us an opportunity to take a shower at the end of the swim and wash off two days of camping mossiness. Taking advantage of public pools is an inexpensive way to let the kids blow off steam. I think this pool cost us all of $3 to swim.

Friday, August 18, 2006 - Beatrice, Nebraska - Homestead Natl Monument We packed up camp this morning and headed for Beatrice, the site of the first homestead in America, a result of the Homestead Act signed into law by Abraham Lincoln in 1862. It was a massive land giveaway, 160 acres promised to any man or woman who could earn it by doing the following:

1. Live on the land for at least six months out of every one of five years. 2. Build a house on the property. 3. Farm ten acres of the property. 4. Plant trees. 5. “Prove up” by showing everything which had been done and paying a fee of $16 at the “local” claim office.

Over two million people took advantage of this law with over 270 million acres of land claimed under the act. The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 repealed the Homestead Act in the lower 48 states, granting Alaska a ten year extension. In June 2001, homesteader, Kenneth Deardorff, a claimant in Stony River, Alaska, was recognized as the last homesteader in America.

Before heading into the center, we had a picnic lunch, my preferred lunching mode. Kira is complaining about it but I think she will become accustomed to this easy and inexpensive way for us to take our midday breaks. Because of the center’s restoration of the native prairie grass, we saw hundreds of butterflies flitting about. One decided to spend the whole of lunch resting on my hand.

A number of banners hang outside the building showing famous people who had either homesteaded themselves or were the children of homesteaders. The first banner depicted Daniel Freeman, one of the very first homesteaders who developed the land on which the center now stands. The most recent homestead was issued in Stony Creek, Alaska in 1990. George Washington Carver, Willa Cather, Virgil Earp, Walter Knott (Knott’s Berry Farm), John Lorenzo Hubbell (Hubbell Trading Post), Enos Mills(Father of Rocky Mountain National Park), Jeanette Rankin (first woman elected to Congress), Lawrence Welk and Laura Ingalls Wilder are all Homestead Legacies. About 100 acres of the property have been returned to prairie tallgrass. the kids and I enjoyed a long, slightly muggy walk around the property. Daniel and his wife, Alice, are buried on a far portion of the land. As we wended are way back to the center, we spotted a couple of blacktail deer which had jumped the fence and were grazing in the park. Daniel had picked a lovely spot with a creek, the woodland and the beautiful prairie. The kids finished up their Junior Ranger program, earned their next badge and we headed for Lincoln.