Engraving from photograph by John Wright, Staff Artist.

CHIMNEY ROCK

In November, 1904, members of the editorial staff of this History made an examination of the picturesque part of the Oregon trail in Nebraska -- between Ash Hollow and Scotts Bluff -- and took the photograph here reproduced. Chimney Rock, a land-mark easily seen thirty miles distant, is two and one-half miles South of Bayard. The area of its dome-like base is upwards of forty acres. Drawings by the early travelers including Frémont, represent the Chimney as cylindrical. It is in fact rectangular, like the chimney of a modern house. Court House Rock--engraving on opposite page-is about five miles South of Bridgeport. Pumpkin Seed creek, a clear and rapidly flowing stream, about two yards wide, runs close to the southern and western base, which rises abruptly from the level valley, then doubles back about sixty yards, thus enclosing a section of an ellipse. The jail, so called from its association with the Court House, is about forty yards east of the latter, and its eastern front is a remarkably symmetrical circular tower. Labyrinthine water courses have been cut through the base of these rocks which cover upwards of eighty acres. Toward the creek they are from twenty to thirty feet in depth, and the rushing waters have smoothed their walls almost to a polish. These remarkable elevations were formed by the action of water cutting away the less durable contiguous rock. The material of which they are composed is somewhat harder, and lighter in color than the clay-banks along the Missouri river. Letters cut in them fifty years ago remain unimpaired, and it does not appear that they have been much diminished in height during that time. Buffalo grass grows up to the beginning of the steep sides.