A Trail That Stops At The Sea

Even today it is easy to see why the Eastern stretch of the old National Road pushed across the country the way it did. The Appalachian terrain, the Potomac River gorge, the vegetative cover and roll of the land dictated the route. Along Route 40 and other older highways there is usually the same strong sense of imperative location. You look around at cliffs and defiles, heavy forests, swamps and deep rivers or their remnants and know why the road is where it is, why it has more or less always been there.

Things become different when one rolls westward out of the wood- and wetlands and onto the great flats and plains. Here, so far as travel was concerned, one place was about as convenient as another to walk, ride or drive a wagon. Even in the Rockies much the same situation prevailed. The Western mountains are much higher than Eastern ones but they are pierced by broad, relatively easy passes. South Pass, for one, the historic point where Oregon-bound emigrant trains crossed the Rockies, is a rolling, grassy gap. Many of the early travelers, accustomed to the difficult and precipitous gorges of the Appalachians, remarked with surprise and pleasure on the gentleness of South Pass.

By the 1850s there were a number of Western pathways suitable for use by wheeled vehicles. They were generally called trails rather than roads, however, and they were not built—they were simply found and marked. A trapper, trader or scout would ride off in some direction; if the way he went seemed convenient (water, forage and the mood of native tribesmen were usually the critical factors), others would follow, erect a few markers and create a trail.

At times Route 40 follows some of the historic paths of the West that evolved in this free-form, even capricious, way. Here and there driving west on Route 40, a motorist is traveling over parts of such trails—Boone's, Santa Fe, Oregon, Fr�mont's, Joe Walker's, Humboldt, Donner's—but in general the association is hazy and tenuous. Again a comparison with the East comes to mind: Route 40, or the newer interstate nearby, more or less has to follow the path of the old National Road because of still prevailing topographical imperatives. But it is more or less coincidence that as it leaves Kansas and heads toward Denver, 40 picks up a bit of Fr�mont's Oregon trail. Across that plain, John Charles Fr�mont, topographical engineer and U.S. pathfinder, could follow any straight line that caught the fancy.

All of which accounts in part for the fact that Western roads have a feeling of looseness. Concrete and asphalt have hardened things a bit, but there is still a sense that the particular route one follows is not all that important, that one could just as well be someplace else under the horizon, traveling the same kind of road in the same direction.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, COLO.

The national parks serve as vacation sites and recreation centers for some 150 million Americans each year—and working in the parks or for the National Forest Service has long struck the young as the most desirable of all summer jobs. Applications for seasonal work with these out-of-doors agencies always outnumber available jobs by more than a hundred to one.

Maura Hennessy, a college student from Eureka, Calif., is one of the lucky ones. After making 50 applications, she found a job at Rocky Mountain Park. However, now that she has it, Maura is somewhat disillusioned. She had great expectations of working in the wilderness, of communing with nature and making a little money while doing so. She is making the money, but she is earning it by working in an information booth at the west entrance to the Park. Since Rocky Mountain annually draws more than 2� million visitors, this is somewhat similar to working at an airlines ticket counter or a complaint desk at Macy's.

"I'm not representing the wilderness here. I'm representing rules and the bureaucracy," Hennessy says. "The questions are all the same. I feel like putting up a board and just pointing to the answers. How do I get to Denver? What is the highest mountain? Are there open campgrounds? Are there any dangerous animals? How long does it take to get to Estes Park? A lot of them think Estes [a ferociously commercial village near the eastern entrance] is the Park.

"The poor turkeys are so hung up on facts and time and their travel schedules. Sometimes I want to shake them and say, 'Hey, don't worry about the time, just enjoy yourself.'