Minnesota, Renville County, near Morton
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"When the men in advance reached Little Crow's village...they saw a column of mounted men and some wagons...going eastward."
Wamditanka
The "men in advance" were Dakota scouts. According to Wamditanka, they were traveling in a group of several hundred toward New Ulm, where an attack was planned. They had stopped at the village of the Mdewakanton chief Taoyateduta (Little Crow) to gather belongings left behind during the siege.
The "mounted men" were Anderson and his command. They were part of a burial detail—150 volunteer soldiers and civilians sent from Fort Ridgely to bury victims of the war that had been raging across the region.
Scenes from a War Zone
Many of the sketches reproduced along this trail were made by Albert Colgrave, a 22-year-old artist who joined Company G, 6th Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment, in September 1862. Around the time the U.S.-Dakota War broke out, he was becoming well known in St. Paul for his theatrical backdrops. "May he become as proficient in handling the musket as the pallet," the St. Paul Daily Press noted when he enlisted.
Colgrave sketched dozens of battle scenes during the war. But his career was cut short: he died of typhoid fever in Glencoe, Minnesota, in March 1863.
Minnesota Historical Society
Birch Coulee Battlefield
(Wars, US Indian) Includes location, directions, 3 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
"When the men in advance reached Little Crow's village...they saw a column of mounted men and some wagons...going eastward."
Wamditanka
The "men in advance" were Dakota scouts. According to Wamditanka, they were traveling in a group of several hundred toward New Ulm, where an attack was planned. They had stopped at the village of the Mdewakanton chief Taoyateduta (Little Crow) to gather belongings left behind during the siege.
The "mounted men" were Anderson and his command. They were part of a burial detail—150 volunteer soldiers and civilians sent from Fort Ridgely to bury victims of the war that had been raging across the region.
Scenes from a War Zone
Many of the sketches reproduced along this trail were made by Albert Colgrave, a 22-year-old artist who joined Company G, 6th Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment, in September 1862. Around the time the U.S.-Dakota War broke out, he was becoming well known in St. Paul for his theatrical backdrops. "May he become as proficient in handling the musket as the pallet," the St. Paul Daily Press noted when he enlisted.
Colgrave sketched dozens of battle scenes during the war. But his career was cut short: he died of typhoid fever in Glencoe, Minnesota, in March 1863.
Minnesota Historical Society
Birch Coulee Battlefield
(Wars, US Indian) Includes location, directions, 3 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
On September 20, 1898, Robert P. Lowe and his wife purchased the property at this site. The commonly held belief is that the house was built by Robert Lowe, who retired from Mobile and Ohio Railroad in 1894 and settled his family in Weatherford. He built the home sometime between 1897 and 1899 during construction of the building that would house his hardware business. Due to a fire that destroyed the Parker County Courthouse in 1874 early records of the home are non-existent. The earliest Sanborn map is for 1885 that depicts a home at the current location and the 1894 map depicts the same home which strongly suggests that a pre-existing structure was expanded or remodeled in the 1890s.
Col. Elmer E. Ellsworth
The Cumberland Covered Bridge was built in 1877. During the Great Flood of 1913, it was washed downstream.
I am Trooper Able Freeman of the 9th Cavalry Regiment. I have been a field slave in south Alabama before and during the Civil War; but after the war, I had nowhere to go when the Union occupied the area. I wandered around living hand-to-mouth for over a year when I heard the Army was going “to raise, among others, one regiment of colored cavalry to be designated the 9th Regiment of U.S. Cavalry”. I walked to New Orleans in September 1866 to enlist for five years, and received $13 per month, plus room, board and clothing – not bad at all for an uneducated former farm hand! By the end of March 1867, we were at nearly full strength and were ordered to San Antonio, Texas, for three months of training. In July, we got our first duty assignment: to maintain law and order between the Indians and settlers along the Rio Grande in western and southwestern Texas. I don’t know which was more trouble- the Indians or the settlers! We also fought outlaws, Mexican revolutionaries, and cattle rustlers and mapped large territories as well as protected crews building railroads and stringing hundreds of miles of telegraph wire. We were in Texas for eight years but were so scattered that we almost never saw more than a few companies together. I tell you it was “forty miles a day on beans and hay” which means hard campaigning since we were in the fields nearly all the time. A good thing during this time was that Army chaplains taught many of us how to read and write for the first time. The Cheyenne Indiana took to calling all four of the colored cavalry and infantry regiments “Buffalo Soldiers” during this time because of our dark skin, curly hair, and fighting spirit. Later we were transferred to the New Mexico Military District, which covered parts of New Mexico, Colorado and Texas, and participated in the Apache Wars from 1875 to 1881. We fought scores of actions unusually with no more than 100 Indians. This included the Battle of Tularosa with Chiricahua Apache warriors led by Victorio in May 1880 which finally convinced the Apaches to live on the hated reservations the government had set aside for them. We have camped in three feet of snow and ridden three days with a pint of water and a handful of hardtack. But even then we were an effective fighting force, and never defeated like the 7th Cavalry under colonel Cluster. We are justly proud of our motto, which was and still is, “We Can and We Will!”
I am First Sergeant Jo Frank Fox of the 167th Infantry Regiment, 42nd (Rainbow) Division, I’m the top sergeant of my company which means when I say ‘JUMP!” all the men jump and ask “How high?” on the way up. I got a glare that can make a platoon of men faint dead away just by glancing at’em! The 167th is an Alabama National Guard unit that until 1917 was the old 4th Alabama Regiment, which traces its history back to the civil War. We are brigaded with Yankees of the 165th Regiment New York National Guard, formerly the 69th Regiment. Now the war has been going on since shortly after a Serbian citizen assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on June 28, 1914. It involved all the world’s great powers except the US which stayed out and sold supplies to the others On May 17, 1915, a German U-boat (submarine) sank the British liner Lusitania with 128 Americans among the dead. President Wilson declared that the US would not tolerate unrestricted submarine warfare but did not want to go to war. However, in January 1917, Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare and even invited Mexico to join the war against the United States. After this and the sinking of seven U.S. Merchant ships by U-boats, Congress declared war on April 6, 1917. The 42nd was sent to France in November 1917. We quickly learned that barbed wire, machine guns, and massed artillery practically stopped infantry advancement. That’s why the lines were almost static and thoroughly entrenched with barracks, mess halls, and headquarters dug right below the trenches. The Germans started it, but all sides used poison gas. It affects caused slow and painful death, but it was never decisive in winning a battle. By 1918, however, new weapons such as tanks got us out of the trenches and on the move. In all, we took part in four major operations: the Champagne-Marne, the Aisne-Marne, the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, and the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. The last victory was the toughest. The Alabama 167th and the Iowa 168th shared equal honors for their parts in the win. An armistice went into effect at 11:00AM November 11, 1918. We had seen 264 days of combat; the longest time of any US Division. The 42nd sailed for home on April 15, 1919 and arrived in New York on April 25. We were deactivated shortly afterward and went back to our families in Alabama having won the “War to End all Wars”.
I am Corporal Leroy Hoekenschnieder serving with D “Dog” Battery, 5th Artillery Battalion. Our battalion was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division and support the 26th Infantry Regiment. The Depression had caused my dad’s business to fail so I enlisted in the Army. In 1940 and 1941, we Regular Army units trained, but we never thought the United States would go to war. Me and my buddies who joined the Army didn’t realize the significance of Japan’s invasion of China in 1937 or Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939. But, everything changed when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and Philippines on 7 December 1941. Our Division Commander, Major General Terry Allen, told us we would be shipped out. Little did I think we would go to North Africa! We made the second US amphibious landing of WW II. I was surprised that the landing craft were crewed by Coast Guardsmen. We were landed; we had to fight the Vichy French government troops who were collaborating with the Germans. The French had once been our ally, so we were told not to fire unless fired on. Well, the French quickly removed that prohibition and we blasted away! Thankfully, our new semi-automatic M1 rifles, called Garands, were superior to both the French and German rifles. From our beachhead, we pushed east and fought the elite armored and infantry troops of German Field Marshall Edwin Rommel’s Afrika Corps. These mobile combat operations required American field artillery to develop new tactics. We responded quickly to calls for artillery support and to mass fire on the enemy. With motorized artillery, we were able to move quickly and always be in range of the troops. As a Forward Observer (FO), I went with the infantry and directed my battery’s fire to aid the front line troops. Good as we were, when the Afrika Corps counter-attacked us in the Kasserine Pass we were badly whipped! I was captured and spent over two years in Nazi POW camps. This is a story for later. Like Americans always have we licked our wounds, got smarter, and in the next battles we showed them a thing or two. In fact, we eventually kicked the Germans out of North Africa, Sicily, Italy and finally pushed them across France into Germany.
ETO 1939-1945
I am Private Peter Pirnat from C Company of the 192nd Light Tank Battalion, Ohio National Guard. My unit was stationed in my hometown of Port Clinton, Ohio. We activated for training in August 1940 with our new M3 Light Tanks. I was the Operations Sergeant in the Battalion’s Headquarters. We were deployed to the Philippines in August 1941 and Major General Wainwright attached us to the 26th Cavalry Regiment (Philippine Scouts). This unit was unique in that it was manned by Filipino Troops who were in the US Army and were still horse mounted. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the Philippines on 7-8 December 1941, we were completely shocked! The devastation was tremendous. On 18 December, the Imperial Forces landed on the north end of Luzon Island. We deployed and fought a long delaying action retreating south to Bataan. We knew immediately that we would have trouble being resupplied. Our unit had the US Army’s first tank on tank battle as we fought our way back. We were supported by the Army Air Corps flying P-35 fighter aircraft. When the planes were destroyed, the pilots and maintenance crews joined us as infantry. Our delaying action bought time so the US and Allied forces could prepare to stop the Japanese conquest. We had no US or Allied reinforcements. Finally, on 9 April with supplies exhausted, we were ordered to surrender. The Japanese Imperial Forces marched us to a prisoner of war (POW) camp over 80 miles away with no food or water. Many of the Americans and Filipinos fell behind due to sickness and starvation and were slaughtered. Those five days we called the Bataan Death March. Few of us can even talk about it. Once in POW camps, just muddy unclean fenced areas, we suffered and died from wounds, disease, starvation and cruelty. The POW population included senior officers such as General Wainwright and his staff officers, Chabot, Johnson and Pugh, who had also made the march and survived. My battalion commander, Lt Colonel Theodore Wickord, and many others were shipped to Japan and used as laborers. I was liberated from Cabanatuan #1 POW camp in the Philippine Islands on the 31st of January 1945 during a brilliant raid by the US 6th Ranger Battalion. Freedom was welcome, but I have many painful memories of those three years of captivity. I tried to refocus and rebuild my life, but it was very difficult.
The Oregon Trail crosses LaPrele Creek about one mile downstream from Natural Bridge. Before the modern road was built into the gorge, Natural Bridge was difficult to access, and it was only rarely visited by emigrants of the covered wagon era. From time to time, however, a few ambitious travelers made their way through the heavy brush and down the steep walls of the canyon to see this remarkable work of nature.
Meandering La Prele Creek drainage cuts into alternating layers of sandstone and sandy limestone of the Permian / Pennsylvanian Casper formation.
