I-29 south of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. October 9, 2009.

The sense of the singular loneliness of the Plains at such a time is overpowering; and one is forced to admire the courage of the pioneers of this highway – plunging as they did into an unknown and uncharted wilderness, fixing their daily position by the sun, or “catching” one of the stars at night in the blazing galaxy overhead, which seems now to magnify to the eye the vastness and emptiness of the great plain below. The view is clear for miles ahead and behind you, while the low sand-bluffs off to the left seem to have gained in distance so that they now appear to be no more than a dark smudge on the southern horizon. Suddenly from out of their shadows comes the wailing, almost human cry of some wandering coyote, the lean and hungry scavenger of the desert. He has seen our fire, and being with all his cunning but a cowardly brute, fear keeps him at his distance; but his scent is keen, and instinct or experience no doubt tells him that in a few hours the flame will have smoldered, and we shall be miles away, leaving him a free range among the bones and scraps and usual debris of a deserted camp, so he bides his time.

Excerpted from Across the Plains in ’65. A Youngster’s Journal, from “Gotham” to “Pike’s Peak”. Self-published by Frank C. Young, 1905, Denver.