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"I Am About to Revolt"

Mormon Thunder at Scottsbluff

I felt all the cares and perplexities of this camp and when a man feels as though his flesh and bones would melt away, he knows it.1

In late May, as the Mormon pioneers pushed forward northwest of Ash Hollow, both the surrounding scenery and the mood of the camp began to change. The newness of the journey, their success with the Pawnee, the excitement of the buffalo hunt, and the almost comforting sameness of the lower Platte River Valley had all given way to a restless realization that with each passing day time was becoming critical. They were now advancing deeper into the lands of the hostile, unpredictable Sioux and far removed from the ample food supplies in the vast buffalo herds of just a few weeks before. One senses from their writings a change in tone, an increasing sobriety, a growing awareness of their smallness in the face of a vast and expansive wilderness, a waning confidence tempered and cooled by the quiet immensity of their newfound isolation.

"One of the Wildest Looking Places"

High up the North Fork of the Platte River, on a ridge separating the North Platte Valley from Pumpkin Creek, the monotony of the prairie landscape at last began to give way. "A menagerie of enormous natural forms, monolithic clay and sandstone shapes," came into view: a domain of massive rock formations such as Courthouse Rock, Chimney Rock, Castle Pioneers Crossing the North Platte River, by C. C. A. Christensen Rock, Dome Rock, and Scottsbluff. "It was one of the wildest looking places I ever passed through," wrote the Oregon-bound James Field during his 1845 travels through the area.2 And the traveler, wrote another earlier observer, "imagined himself in the midst of the desolate and deserted ruins of vast cities, to which Nineveh, Thebes, and Babylon were pygmies in grandeur and magnificence."3

Soon after noon on 22 May, Porter Rockwell reported that he had ascended a nearby bluff and had seen in the distance the fabled Chimney Rock. To satisfy their curiosity, William Clayton, Horace K. Whitney, and John Pack grabbed a telescope and scampered up the nearby hillside like excited children to view the surrounding country. Said Clayton: "Northeast, north, and northwest, alternately, appeared high swelling bluffs and valleys as far as the eye could see or the glass magnify. . . . At the distance I should judge of about twenty miles, I could see Chimney Rock very plainly with the naked eye, which from here very much resembles the large factory chimneys in England, although I could not see the form of its base."4

Whitney, a talented writer, was even more descriptive: "The scene to us was truly one of magnificence and grandeur and almost baffles description," he penned.

The whole scene was one of romantic solitude and inspired me with singular feelings and reminding me forcibly of the descriptions I had read in my boyish days of the fortified castles and watchtowers of the older time. We had an opportunity of viewing it to the greatest advantage, as the setting sun, throwing its lengthening rays upon hill, dale, mound and river, made the sight inexpressibly grand and solemn.5