• Tour A: Cherokee Trail and Overland Stage Route

In 1862 Ben Holladay, “the Stagecoach King,” took over the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company,  shortening the name to the Overland Stage Line.

This full-day tour will leave from The Ranch for Sherwood Station, Fort Collins Military Post Site, and the Overland Park Swing Station marker.  View the Cherokee/Stonewall/10-Mile Swing Station site, the setting for Louis L’Amour’s novel, The Cherokee Trail, and noted landmarks Steamboat and Tug Rocks.

Feast on station grub at the Virginia Dale Station and visit with “Mark Twain” and “Virginia Slade.”  This station was made famous by the legendary and notorious Jack Slade.  Lunch, served by the Virginia Dale Community Club, is included.

Return along the foothills route through LaPorte, the Cache La Poudre River crossing, past the Spring Canyon Swing Station, and back to The Ranch.

Guides for this tour include Peggy Ford and Wayne Sundberg, accompanied by trail experts Ken Jessen and Dan Rottenberg.

• Tour B: Cherokee Trail and Overland Stage Route, with hike
  
  This full-day tour will be similar to Tour A - the non-hiking Cherokee/Overland Trail tour, but because of the time required for the hike, certain areas covered in Tour A will be omitted.

  After leaving The Ranch, the tour will view the Sherwood Station site, the Fort Collins Military Fort site, and the Overland Park Swing Station marker.

  The two-hour hike will begin through some Overland Trail ruts to tipi rings and Signature Rock.  The hike is about one-mile each way.  The beginning is a slight uphill slope, which gets a bit steeper below Signature Rock, with “a little climb” to get to the top.  This is rattlesnake country.  Be cautious.

  The bus portion of the tour will resume with a visit to Virginia Dale Station. This station was made famous by the legendary and notorious Jack Slade.  Feast on station grub at the Virginia Dale Station and visit with “Mark Twain” and “Virginia Slade.”  Lunch, served by the Virginia Dale Community Club, is included.  

  The buses will return along the foothills route through LaPorte, the Cache La Poudre River crossing, past the Spring Canyon Swing Station and back to The Ranch.

  Guides for this tour include Peggy Ford and Wayne Sundberg, accompanied by trail experts Ken Jessen and Dan Rottenberg.

• Tour C: Four Forts Along the South Platte River

This full-day tour will visit the sites of civilian fur-trading posts along the South Platte River Trail.  This road has been used by mountain men, military expeditions, Mormons, emigrants, gold-seekers, and homesteaders since 1820, when Stephen H. Long ascended the river.  The posts, active during the mid-to late 1830s, were built, owned, and operated by such well-known frontiersmen as Lancaster Lupton, Peter Sarpy, Henry Fraeb, Louis Vasquez, Andrew Sublette, George Bent, and Ceran St. Vrain.

These posts, Fort Jackson, Fort Lupton, Fort St. Vrain, and Fort Vasquez, were part of the north-south Trappers-Taos Trail, linking Bent’s Old Fort and Santa Fe on the Santa Fe Trail with Fort Laramie on the Oregon-California Trail.  Fort Vasquez is now a full-size replica reconstructed on its original site in the 1930s by the Works Project Administration (WPA).

Displays and re-enactors will bring the fur trade era to life.  The tour will end with a visit to Latham, also known as Cherokee City, at a point where several trails crossed the South Platte River.

Lunch, set among 100 acres of South Platte bottomland owned by the South Platte Valley Historical Society at Fort Lupton, is included.

Guides for this tour are Carol and Vern Osborne, Jane and Lee Whiteley.

• Tour D: Loveland and Berthoud: Trails Across the Thompson Valleys

Pioneer trail enthusiasts in Colorado have long been aware of the importance of lesser known  trails running along the piedmont of the Rocky Mountains, first traced by wild game, followed by Native Americans, then by intrepid European pioneers.  Although the names of famous roads such as the Oregon, Mormon, Santa Fe and California Trails come easily to mind, the Overland Stage Road and in particular the Cherokee Trail have traditionally been less popular with historians outside of Colorado.  However, the importance of these trails and others into and through the foothills of the Rockies is rendered none the less significant.

It is interesting to note that modern peoples’ main transportation routes often trace the path of ancient peoples’ primitive roads, and for generally the same reasons.  In Colorado we can point to Interstate Highway I-25 as the modern counterpart of the old Cherokee and later the Overland Trails.  

Like the old Trails, I-25 links the southern region of the West with its northern region.  In 1849 the Cherokee Trail extended the old Taos Trappers’ Trail north beyond the new supply hub, Denver City, making a connection between the Santa Fe Trail in northern New Mexico and the Oregon, Mormon and California Trails in southern Wyoming. 

While there are few ruts visible today, and the Overland’s records were lost in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fires, there is tangible evidence of these trails’ footprints through northern Colorado.   Denver is still an important hub, and of course many smaller towns which sprang up along the trails owe their existence to the early roads.  Loveland and Berthoud (ber-thud), 60 miles north of Denver with a mere six miles between, are two of those small towns.

Although both towns had been researching trail history in their immediate areas, the 2009 OCTA convention is the catalyst that has produced a two-fold outcome with the future promise of more.  First, an exciting joint research effort of the Little and Big Thompson crossings has emerged that should yield much history candy, and secondly a day-long bus tour of both trails in this region. Tour D: Loveland – Berthoud: Trails Across the Thompson Valleys, promises to be informative and enjoyable for all. 

The Berthoud section of the tour begins with an overlook that offers a view of 20 miles of the mile-wide trail corridor, the view that travelers relied upon to get their bearings as they left Denver City behind and made their way north to Wyoming.  Research has revealed the site of an 1850 camp site on the Cherokee Trail southwest of Berthoud.  

The Cherokee hugged the foothills while the later Overland route ran parallel about a mile east.  Early Berthoud residents honored the pioneers who came before them with a memorial along the trail, which was later removed to a town park due to a state highway widening project.  A first person interpretation of the teacher whose students spearheaded the relocation will be given at the park.  

The Overland Mail Western Division Superintendent built a stone home that is still occupied on the Little Thompson River south of Berthoud, and his influence insured his friend Mariano Medina’s crossing on the Big Thompson, six miles northwest of present-day Loveland, would become a Home Station.  The Loveland and Berthoud Historical Societies are gratified to revive the trail connection between the two stations as they work to preserve the history. 

The bus tour traverses an original concrete portion of the Colorado branch of the Lincoln Highway between Berthoud and Loveland, the nation’s first transcontinental auto road of 1917.  Loveland stops of course include Mariano Medina’s Crossing on the Big Thompson River where the lay of the land necessitated the trails merge.  Mariano’s settlement was the first permanent one in the valley, which at its height grew to about 100 souls, some of whom were former mountain men and their Indian wives, as was Mariano. 

Recent research has shed new light on the story of this man and his settlement, and will be the subject of a presentation given to the OCTA convention on August 21.  It has also spawned a preservation movement of the remaining few acres of the complex that have for some reason escaped development the last 151 years.  The Medina family cemetery preservation efforts are currently nearing fruition, thanks to a generous landowner, certainly a very happy note to local historians, and to all trail enthusiasts.

Not far from Medina’s Crossing, also known as Miraval, Big Thompson and by its modern day name Namaqua, is the original site of a pioneer’s grave of whom little was known, other than the inscription on the tombstone.   OCTA has discovered more information about this trail-side burial and the tour will include a dedication at the relocated grave in Loveland’s Lakeside Cemetery.  Lakeside will also sport interpreters portraying three men important to Loveland’s trail history. 

This tour will have a sit-down lunch at the Loveland Museum and Gallery, catered by Antonio’s Burritos, a popular Loveland Mexican food restaurant.  

Time will be allowed to examine a display of the Rocky Mountain Map Association’s excellent and comprehensive collection of antique maps.  Buses will return to The Ranch by 4:45 PM.  Tour guides from both Loveland and Berthoud Historical Societies hope Trails Across the Thompson Valleys will prove to be an unforgettable convention experience for all those who participate.   

This tour will be conducted on Saturday, August 22 only.

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