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Oregon Trail
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This week’s Oregon Trail Days
Celebration in Gering commemorates the region’s
historical connection to the great migration of
settlers that passed through the region in the great
wave of westward migration that occurred from
approximately 1840 through 1865. Most of those who
traveled the Oregon Trail were headed to the
bountiful forested lands of Oregon, Washington, and
California. Their accounts of their passage through
this region dwell more on the unique geological
formations which served as distinctive landmarks and
as benchmarks of their progress toward their
ultimate destinations farther west.
But the Wyobraska countryside
through which the Oregon Trail passed also contained
a rich diversity of native plants. According to
accounts written by those traveling the Oregon
Trail, the indigenous landscape of the region was
much different from what we see today. The major
difference was that there were few if any trees
along the North Platte River, a result of frequent
and intense prairie fires. So the North Platte
River valley looked much more like the open sand
hills region to the east and north. |
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Which is why the plants of the
old Oregon Trail are returning in force to Wyobraska
landscapes. Native and adapted evergreen trees and
shrubs, a limited, but nonetheless adequate
selection of native and adapted deciduous shrubs,
especially medium to large shrubs, grasses in the
form of native and adapted ornamental grasses, and,
of course, perennial flowers—evocative of the
seasonal progression of wildflowers that are the
ornamental landmarks of any prairie.
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Previous Articles
April 27, 2006
Crazy Clematis
May 04, 2006
Ornamental Grasses
May 11, 2006
Perennials
May 18, 2006
Herbs
May 25, 2006
Hummingbird Garden
Party
June 1, 2006
Gardening with Kids
June 8, 2006
Wildflower Week
June 15th
Shade Garden
June 29
Thumbs,
Feathers, Fruit
July 6, 2006
Reading Plants Coming Soon
A Prairie Garden Journal
Searchable Archives |
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Prairie grasses were the
region’s dominant plant. Tall prairie grasses
filled the river bottoms and wet meadows, while mid
and short grass species filled the progressively
less hospitable locations around the region.
Prairie flowers were much more visibly a part of the
ecology of these prairies than is currently
evidenced in the regions pastures and ranchland.
Find any prairie land that has not been grazed for a
few years, and you’ll get an idea of the relative
density of prairie flowers in the region’s native
prairies.
The dominant tree species were
evergreens--Ponderosa pine and Rocky Mountain
juniper which prairie fires had limited to
relatively sparse stands lining the buttes and
ridges of the region, a position which they still
occupy in our region’s landscape. Tall prairie
grasses could not grow as densely in the hardpan
soils which make up these ridges, and thus the
buttes and ridges were some of the few spots in the
region where trees and woody shrubs could escape or
at least survive the almost annual prairie fires.
In the very oldest
neighborhoods of our Wyobraska communities one can
find evidence of these native plants having been
used as landscape plants. A few of these old Rocky
Mountain juniper and Ponderosa pine are, without a
doubt, the oldest surviving residents of our
communities. Most are beautiful, healthy trees with
many years of life still to enjoy. Perhaps a few of
these “old settlers” deserve a little recognition,
too.
At some point in our region’s settlement, more
“refined” and domesticated landscape plants began to
fill the region’s human landscapes, and for most of
the past century, the natural beauty of the
region’s Oregon Trail heritage has been obscured by
a succession of supposedly more vigorous, more
floriferous, or more domesticated landscape
plants. Most have proven to be less vigorous, less
floriferous, and generally insipid plants. |
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These plants are showing up in
residential and commercial landscapes all across the
region. This landscape migration back to the
horticultural heritage of the Oregon Trail is not
driven by some wild-eyed historical
preservationists, but rather by the more practical
considerations of what plants give the greatest
visual interest with the least care and trouble.
The recent prolonged drought, a phenomenon not
unknown to the pioneers, has only served to increase
the interest in native and well-adapted landscape
plants.
So enjoy the week’s Oregon
Trail Days activities, and when the celebration is
over, if your landscape looks more like Ohio or
Kentucky than like Chimney Rock or Scotts Bluff,
consider making your own landscape migration back to
the plants of the old Oregon Trail.
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