Show Me Missouri: Cross-country to Branson (6.8.24)

I know that I am, heart and soul, a "Westerner".  I was born and raised in the Western United States, and I expect to die and be buried there.  But I'm not so sure I know what being a "Westerner" means.  As I drive the interstates from Utah east, I always ask myself that question, including what myths and icons Westerners have adopted, and where the West begins and ends.  On June 8 and 9, 2024, Dave and I dashed along I-80 to Lincoln, Nebraska, where we turned south into Missouri.  When I expected to retire fulltime, I thought I'd enjoy accepting free timeshare promotions, and we scheduled one in Branson, Missouri.  I quickly had second thoughts! Our first stop on the trip was Little America, in the middle of Wyoming.  Dave and I each bought 75 cent ice cream cones.  It was a deal, even though the original price was 10 cents.  

The Wyoming Little America is a western icon, the equivalent of an oasis in the middle of the Sahara.  When Dave was a boy living in Maryland, his parents drove home to Utah every year to visit family. Stopping at Little America proved they were almost there.  This vintage sign of Little America refers to the owners, the "Holdings."  There are also fun Western memories, for me, attached to the Holdings.  Jenny worked as a private nurse to Mr. Holding, years ago, when Jonny was an undergraduate at the University of Utah. Both Jonny and Jenny traveled with the Holdings on their private plane to the Holdings' lodge in Sun Valley and to their property in California.  For starving students, it was a taste of luxury.  They were also on hand to see what owners of a great hotel at a mountain resort do when the power goes off in the middle of the winter, stranding all the guests!

This sign portrays well my memory and Dave's, of being children traveling across the endless Wyoming sagebrush and finally arriving for our ice cream cone!  

Buffalo, stagecoaches, and dinosaurs--those are certainly icons of the West.

A swath of inland North America, from Utah to Alberta, Canada, was once a great inland sea.  It is a prime area for discovering dinosaur bones, from creatures who died on the edge of the sea and were preserved in the mud.  Years ago, I represented a company that unearthed dinosaur bones and assembled them into displays for museums.  I wrote the contract that sold a dinosaur skeleton to a Japanese museum for $500,000!

We spent the first night of our trip in Cheyenne, Wyoming, with a stop at the Wyoming State Museum.  That was a great place to see what Westerners think represents them.  And Wyoming is clearly the West.  My grandson, Michael Flindt, spent his LDS mission in Wyoming and Colorado, including helping out at the Cheyenne Rodeo as community service.  I told Michael that experience made him more of a Westerner than all the rest of us!  I offered to fix him a Sunday dinner with Western foods from his mission.  He suggested deer meat and home-canned fruits and vegetables, since that's what many people in rural Wyoming live on.  The only deer meat I could find in SLC's grocery stores was sold as dog food!

As we reached this iconic overpass above the freeway at Kearny, Nebraska, we stopped to visit the Great Platte River Road Museum.  Out front was the skeleton of a covered wagon, a fitting reminder of the thousands of pioneers who had followed the Platte River West between 1840 and 1868, when the Golden Spike connected railroads across the country.  All of my great-grandparents followed the Platte River to Utah in the 1840s and 1850s.  During pioneer days, Ft. Kearny was the last place to stock up on provisions for the trail until Laramie, Wyoming, hundreds of miles further west.

There was a sculpture park around the museum, with plaques telling the stories the sculptures represent.  The Martin brothers were cornered by Indians near Kearny in 1864.  The teenagers were hit by four arrows as they tried to outrun the Cheyenne and Sioux warriors.  They fell off their horse, linked together by an arrow, and played dead.  The warriors left and the two brothers lived to tell the tale, one surviving until 1927.

The Indians depended on buffalo for food, tents, and most other necessities of life.  In the 1870s and 1880s, whites from the military and back East killed off the buffalo and pushed the Indians onto reservations.  Buffalo are used, over and over, as a symbol of the West.  I will never forget a huge, gorgeous painting of a buffalo in a snow storm which is a treasure of the National Wildlife Museum in Jackson, Wyoming.

Another icon of the West is the mountain man.  The first white explorers of the West were fur traders, who reputedly looked like this fellow at the museum.  I asked if he'd pose for me and he replied, "Yep, but I ain't gonna smile."

The first highway connecting East and West was the Lincoln Highway, built in 1919.  Dwight Eisenhower supervised its construction, long before he became president in 1953 and supervised the creation of an interstate highway system.  Dave has always been interested in the Lincoln Highway, which goes through Utah.  Jonny has recommended a new novel to me, titled the "Lincoln Highway."

After our stop at Kearny, we got back on I-80 and traveled to Lincoln, Nebraska, for the night.  Somewhere in eastern Nebraska, the West ends and the Midwest begins (I think!).

This sign from Kearny shows both Western and Midwestern icons.  It advertises "Native Prairie Plants" and warns, "Please watch for deer and antelope at play.  I think of the "prairie" as in the Midwest, although I'm sure others disagree.  Deer and antelope are, for sure, Western creatures!