ss a measure to accomplish it, I am with you and will give my
support to do it thoroughly."

Mr. Roosevelt thought the suggestion of a memorial highway should first
come from the states through which the trail runs. However, it would be
possible to get Congressional aid to mark the trail. In any event, he
felt it ought to be done speedily.

Unexpectedly the President asked, "Where is your team? I want to see
it."

Upon being told that it was nearby, without ceremony, and without his
hat, he was soon alongside, asking questions faster than they could be
answered, not idle questions, but such as showed his intense desire to
get real information, bottom facts.

President Roosevelt was a man who loved the pioneers and who understood
the true West. His warm welcome remains in my heart as one of the
richest rewards of the many that have come as compensation for my
struggle to carry out my dream.

On the eighth of January, 1908, I left Washington, shipping my outfit
over the Allegheny Mountains to McKeesport, Pennsylvania. From
McKeesport I drove to Pittsburgh, and there put the team into winter
quarters to remain until the fifth of March. Thence I shipped by boat on
the Ohio River to Cincinnati, stopping in that city but one day, and
from there I shipped by rail to St. Louis, Missouri.

My object now was to retrace the original trail from its beginnings to
where it joined the Oregon Trail, over which I had traveled. This trail
properly ran by water from St. Louis to Independence, thence westward
along the Platte to Fort Laramie.

At Pittsburgh and adjacent cities I was received cordially and
encouraged to believe that the movement to make a great national highway
had taken a deep hold in the minds of the people.

I was not so much encouraged in St. Louis. The city officers were
unwilling to do anything to further the movement, but before I left the
city, the Automobile Club and the Daughters of the American Revolution
did take formal action indorsing the work. St. Louis had really been the
head and center of the movement that finally established the original
Oregon Trail. It was from here that Lewis and Clark started on the
famous expedition of 1804-05 that opened up the Northwest. Here was
where Wyeth, Bonneville, and others of the early travelers on the trail
had outfitted.

[Illustration: _Brown Bros._

The homeward trip took us through the great industrial cities of the
Middle states, among them Pittsburgh.]