Bones of Oregon Trail Pioneers Being Laid To Rest On Ranch Near Glendo

Description

Beneath a little-traveled gravel road many miles east of Glendo State Park, a pioneer cemetery was discovered. Here, travelers from the Oregon Trail had buried their dead. Over a period of 31 years, three skeletons began to emerge from their graves, right on Patten Creek Road, and were excavated. Archaeologists from the University of Wyoming determined these remains belonged to two women and an adolescent boy. They were not of the same family, yet they were buried next to each other, sometime in the 1850s and 1860s, in the soft earth within view of a spring and a stand of trees where the travelers often took breaks. As time went on, the spring became part of a privately owned ranch, and a gravel road that leads to Hartville was built above the graves. Since the bones were unearthed, they have been kept at the University of Wyoming, where they were studied, analyzed and scanned.