Kindle Notes & Highlights
breaking away from the Oregon Trail near Soda Springs, Idaho. Diaries written by the pioneers include brief descriptions of the area. One traveler “passed over a valley covered with wild wheat as high as my shoulder. It was headed out and looked like a cultivated wheat field.”
The bottomlands along the Raft River, Goose Creek, and Rock Creek were noted for their dense stands of tall native grasses.
Mule deer were not abundant then, even in the high mountains of extreme northeastern Nevada. On some years, the entire party was lucky to get a single shot at a buck. Shrubs that provided forage for browsing deer were increasing on the sagebrush/grasslands, especially in the aftermath of the winter of 1889–90, and mule deer populations were responding to this increase, but populations had not yet increased to the point where deer were abundant.
