City of Rocks National Reserve, Almo, Idaho -

“This City is walled in on every side with towering granite mountains, some peaks shooting athwart the sky like towering domes. While hundreds of piles, peaks, steeples and domes, of all shapes possible in the distance looking like an old dilapidated City”
– Emigrant journal entry from Dr. John Hudson Wayman – July 12, 1852

City of Rocks National Reserve sits upon the California Trail traveled by pioneers fulfilling “Manifest Destiny.” Between the discovery of gold and the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, 240,000 pioneers traversed these lands, some leaving their names and wagon trails in the rocks. Later, Homesteaders settled the land. Later still, I arrived.

The cows were all about as we headed in through a long gravel road