14 Days Until Trek - Bathing on the Trail

Pioneer travel on the trail was often dirty. The wagons and feet of pioneers and animals kicked up a lot of dust. 19th-century overland travelers often followed rivers and streams so that the pioneers and their animals had water to drink. It is not by accident that the Mormon Trail followed the Platte, North Platte, and Sweetwater Rivers. Once the pioneers crossed the continental divide, they used water sources that eventually ended up in the the Colorado River, the Gulf of California and Pacific Ocean or the Great Salt Lake. Those rivers and streams provided water for the pioneers to bath and refresh tired bodies as well.

Where we are headed for Trek, there is not a lot of water. If there was, we wouldn't want to drink it without filtering it. We will be hauling fresh, clean water for Trek. If past Treks are followed, there will be an opportunity to use that water to clean up and refresh, be it a hair wash or washing hands and splashing water on your face. You will have plenty of water on Trek.

“Bathing, which was far from the daily necessity that modern Americans consider it, was a rare pleasure on the trail. Sometimes they could bathe during ‘nooning’ stops, but night was the most common opportunity. When A. P. Rockwood arrived at the ‘bank of the Platt’ on April 20, 1847, ‘several of us went to the river and washed and bathed this Evening. We have need of this Every night for it is very dirty.’”

Selection from Stanley B. and Violet T. Kimball's 2011 book, Villages on Wheels: A Social History of the Gathering to Zion.

AI-image critique. I'm not sure what bathing on the trail looked like. In the middle of the 19th-century, Victorian standards emphasized the covering of the body. In asking for this image, I reminded ChatGPT that the audience for this image was a group of conservative, religious teens. Does this image depict reality? I'll need to do more research and there is the possibility that not many people wrote about it. For example, did women and men bathe in the river at the same time? There is much for interested minds to learn about life on the trail.