--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Lambourne, Alfred collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 15 number: 9 published: 1912-07 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Alfred Lambourne, "Sunrise on the Plains of Nebraska," *Improvement Era* 15, no. 9 (July 1912): 841–842.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1509unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera1509unse start_page: 841 end_page: 842 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1912-07) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1509unse publication_year: 1912 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1912, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Sunrise on the Plains of Nebraska M u o « 5 £ u s H a I "-) < ir « xp pa n S ^ O _§ tfl ** £ -3 Pi G g ! O °'HE Chimney Rock, or the Half-Way Post, as it was sometimes suggestively called, was a most picturesque object. It was one of the most noted land-marks to be seen upon the entire trip across the plains. After we had first sighted, through the western opening of a noon corral, the pale blue shaft, wavy through the haze that arose from the heated ground, it seemed to us that the slow-going oxen would never reach it ; or rather, that they would never arrive at the point on the road opposite that natural curiosity, for the emigrant trail passed several miles to the northward of the low range of bluffs of which the Chimney Rock is a part. One evening several members of our company tried to walk from our nearest camp to the terraced slopes of the chimney's base, but the distance proved too great. That was our lesson in the deceptiveness of space in that rarified atmosphere — the distance to hills and mountains. In the picture, on the foregoing page, the Chimney is shown as it appeared from the banks of the Lawrence Creek. An emigrant train — that under the command of Captain John D. Holladay, 1866, — is seen fording the shallow stream. The pioneers had made an early start, just as the light of the rising sun was breaking from behind a mass of clouds that lies along the eastern horizon. The captain was keeping a watchful eye upon the safe passage of each wagon through the water, for in the bed of the creek were quick-sands, and a stop was attended with danger. Eternal vigilance was the price that the captain must pay to bring his company safely over the wilderness of plains and mountains. — From the Old Journey, by Alfred Lambourne.