As Jim Todd encouraged a wagon team to the top of a steep, cedar-covered ridge high above the Cheyenne River on Friday with shouts of "Gee, Pins," "Step it Up, Nuts" and "Ha, Bolt," his great-grandfather was never far from his mind.

Todd is a long-haul trucker from Harrisburg who is spending 17 days driving a team of four Belgian horses harnessed to a buckboard wagon across western South Dakota because it is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Men like John Wesley Todd routinely drove the same route out of Fort Pierre with freight wagons loaded with provisions that kept a growing invasion of gold miners and others supplied with the goods they needed to settle the Black Hills.

"My great-grandfather was a freight wagon driver with a six-hitch mule team on the old Deadwood trail, which is why I wanted to do it, too," Todd said. "I've enjoyed the heck out of it."

He and his wife, Teri, a veterinarian who specializes in the treatment and transport of large exotic animals, including elephants and rhinos, brought their team of four draft horses - Pins, Bolt, Nuts and a 2-year-old mare named Rosie - plus three saddle horses. The stock rode in a high-profile semitrailer they use to move elephants for circuses and zoos. Feed for them - including 90 bales of hay - followed in a horse trailer.

A love of history and horses is what brought 300 people to spend $200 on a trail badge that gave them the right to ride a little-seen historic trail crossing 51 private ranches, numerous gravel roads and a little public land that will end on Aug. 15 in a triumphant parade down Deadwood's Main Street.

The wagon train brings together riders like Ron Baker, an affable remodeling contractor from Minneapolis who borrowed a horse from his friend Rob Comp of Presho, with Jerry Nelson, a Plum Creek-area rancher who joined the ride near Philip. Nelson rode his horse, Big John, and led a pack horse that carried his bedroll and other provisions for the five days he spent on the trail in true cowboy style. "I ain't named the black one yet," Nelson said of the pack horse.

Traveling even lighter than Nelson was Paul Seaman of Draper. Like the bull whackers of old - who were punished by four lashes from their wagon master if caught hitching a ride on the oxen - Seaman is walking the entire 200-mile trail.

Many of the other riders traveled in more comfortable quarters - Airstreams and RVs - that created a movable mini-community each night, complete with port-a-potties and a 6,000-gallon water tank, at campsites along the way. Usually, participants moved their vehicles and horse trailers first, then were bused back to their animals and wagons to complete that day's segment of the trail.

Like Nelson and Baker, trail rider Bill Walsh of Rapid City said he did not want to miss a rare chance to see and touch the history of the Old West, including the 138-year-old log cabin way station still standing at Peno Springs.

"It's been amazing. Not only the pioneer trails, but the Indian trails we've been on, too," Walsh said.

Walsh also wanted to make some personal history of his own.

"I'll be able to tell my grandkids about this," Walsh said.

It was that freight trail history, what Chief David Bald Eagle calls a "trail of broken treaties" that kept the Lakota elder from participating in the anniversary ride to mark the last wagon train in 1908. Still, Bald Eagle stopped by the trail ride's campground next to the Cheyenne River on Aug. 7 to wish its participants well during an evening program that focused on the Lakota perspective.

But Todd said he would not have missed the ride for anything, even if he estimates it cost him about $20,000 in expenses and lost income to participate in the 17-day trail ride.

"It's worth every dime of that to me," Todd said.

On Friday, Todd got his money's worth in a sweeping vista of a stunningly beautiful Cheyenne River valley and the bragging rights that came with completing the nerve-wracking climb to the top.

"Everybody who topped this hill here today got bragging rights to it," said wagon master Gerald Kessler, who took his own two-mule team up it.

On the Net: fortpierredeadwoodtrail.com

Contact Mary Garrigan at 394-8424 or mary.garrigan@rapidcityjournal.com