Location:
Scotts Bluff
Distance: 738 miles from Nauvoo

The Bluff is named for Hiram Scott, a Rocky Mountain Fur Company trapper abandoned here by his companions when he became ill. Numerous accounts of his tragic death were noted by early travelers along the Platte. As with many other landmarks along the Platte, virtually all those who kept journals mention it, including Latter-day Saints, most of whom were traveling on the north side of the Platte. Also located near the site is the grave of Rebecca Winters, a Latter-day Saint mother who fell victim to cholera in 1852. Recently the gravesite was moved and rededicated.

Asa S. Hawley

"The cholera broke out in our camp. The most sorrowful to me was the death of Sister Winters, one of God's noble and courageous women. We buried her on the Platte River opposite Scott's Bluffs. Great was our sorrow in having to leave her there. She has gone to her rest."

(Asa S. Hawley, Autobiography, carbon copy of typescript, HDC.)

Wilford Woodruff

August 14, 1850

"Traveled to Scott's Bluffs and Alexander Badlam and myself explored Scott's Bluffs from top to bottom for about ten miles; they had many grand formations of nature in some places. We rolled off large rocks of near a ton's weight that would go thundering down the mountain and into the vale beneath, levelling the cedars to the earth and starting the wolves from their hiding places as it bounded on its way for half a mile from its starting place. After spending several hours of hard labor, though pleasant, among those grand ruins or bluffs we left them and returned to camp. We passed Burdoe's trading post. He enquired of me but I did not see him. Bro. Corrier turned his wagon bottom side upwards; broke thing up. The Indians tried to raise a stampede among us, but did not do it. Traveled 20 miles and camped."

(Wilford Woodruff Journals, 14 Aug. 1850, HDC.)

Priscilla Merriman Evans

"My husband in a joking way told an Indian, who admired me, that he would trade me for a pony. He thought no more about it, but the next day here came the Indian with a pony and it was no joke to him. Never was I so frightened in all my life. . . . There was no place to hide and we did not know what to do. The captain was called and they had some difficulty in settling with the Indian without trouble."

(Priscilla Merriman Evans, Heart Throbs of the West [Salt Lake City, Utah: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1948], 9:9.)

Mary Ann Stucki

Summer 1860

"Father had bought a cow to take along, so we could have milk on the way. . . . He thought he would make a harness and have her pull the cart. . . . One day a group of Indians came riding up on horses. . . . [They] frightened the cow and sent her chasing off with the cart and children. . . . The cow fell into a deep gully and the cart turned upside down. Although the children were under the trunk and bedding, they were unhurt."

(Mary Ann [Stucki] Hafen, Recollections of a Handcart Pioneer of 1860 [Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1983], 22-23.)

Journal photographs courtesy of Infobases, Inc. [an error occurred while processing this directive]