Fort Mitchell And The Road

“The Gap” threaded through the wind-cut spires and time-worn edifices of nature’s carved cathedrals in the towering sandstone walls of Scott’s Bluffs. North of the bluffs, reaching to the banks of the Flatwater (Platte), lay a rugged expanse of land known as “The Badlands,” an area of deep-cut ravines and gullies that no team of horses or oxen, pulling an overloaded immigrant wagon, could possibly traverse. And so, about five miles east of the gap, the trail would leave the nearby banks of the river and strike more westerly toward the imposing fortress ahead. Once through the gap, ox teams and...