The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey

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From the earliest decades of the Republic, groups of migrants headed west from the established states to stake out homesteads on the western periphery of institutional society. They traveled first across the Appalachian Mountains into the Old Northwest—today’s states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan—then from the South to populate Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa. By the 1820s, some politicians called for resettlement in the Oregon Country, a relatively un-resettled region over which the United States and Great Britain jointly claimed sovereignty by treaty in 1818. The penetration of the fur trade into the region during the 1820s and 1830s, especially on the Upper Missouri and the Columbia river basins, exposed both the natural wealth of the region and the presence of Native populations. During most of this westward movement, overland trails and river passages were essential conduits of people, trade, and institutional expansion. In 1923, Walter Meacham, an Oregon Trail enthusiast from Baker, created the Old Oregon Trail Association, which staged sentimental public programs promoting the commemoration of nineteenth-century emigration to Oregon. The National Park Service declared the Oregon Trail a National Historic Trail in 1981, partly in anticipation of the trail’s sesquicentennial. In 1993, the State of Oregon, through the Oregon Trail Coordinating Committee, sponsored a multi-year commemoration with public programs, publications, and museum exhibitions.

Overall, some 268,000 pioneers used the Oregon Trail and its three primary offshoots, the Bozeman, California, and Mormon Trails, to reach the West Coast, 1840–1860. Another 48,000 headed to Utah. There is no estimate on how many used it to return East. [92] Emigrants [ edit ] Estimated California Oregon Mormon Trail Emigrants [60] Year

CHAPTER I

Food and water were key concerns for migrants. Wagons typically carried at least one large water keg, [85] [86] and guidebooks available from the 1840s and later gave similar advice to migrants on what food to take. T. H. Jefferson, in his Brief Practice Advice guidebook for migrants, recommended that each adult take 200 pounds of flour: "Take plenty of breadstuffs; this is the staff of life when everything else runs short." [85] [86]

Continued emigration added sufficient population by 1846 to aid U.S. negotiators in securing the Oregon Treaty with Great Britain, which described Oregon as the land north of the 42 nd Parallel, east to the Continental Divide, and north to the 49 th Parallel. With just over 5,000 inhabitants, Oregon secured territorial status from Congress in 1848, and the territory’s population topped 12,000 by 1850. Kaiser, Leo, and Priscilla Knuth, eds. “From Ithaca to Clatsop: Miss Ketcham’s Journal of Travel, Pt. 2.” Oregon Historical Quarterly(December 1961): 397.

CHAPTER XXVI

Tobacco was popular, both for personal use and for trading with natives and other pioneers. Each person brought at least two changes of clothes and multiple pairs of boots (two to three pairs often worn out on the trip). About 25 pounds of soap was recommended for a party of four, for bathing and washing clothes. A washboard and tub were usually brought for washing clothes. Wash days typically occur once or twice a month, or less, depending on the availability of good grass, water, and fuel. Publishers Weekly: " An entertaining and enlightening account of one of America’s most legendary migrations. Even readers who don’t know a horse from a mule will find themselves swept up in this inspiring and masterful tale of perseverance and the pioneer spirit. [3] Similarly, emigrant Martha Gay Masterson, who traveled the trail with her family at the age of 13, mentioned the fascination she and other children felt for the graves and loose skulls they would find near their camps. [31]

Brooks D. Simpson; Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph Over Adversity, 1822–1865; 2000, ISBN 978-0-395-65994-6, p. 55 Starting in about 1848 the South Alternate of Oregon Trail (also called the Snake River Cutoff) was developed as a spur off the main trail. It bypassed the Three Island Crossing and continued traveling down the south side of the Snake River. It rejoined the trail near present-day Ontario, Oregon. It hugged the southern edge of the Snake River Canyon and was a much rougher trail with poorer water and grass, requiring occasional steep descents and ascents with the animals down into the Snake River Canyon to get water. Travelers on this route avoided two dangerous crossings of the Snake River. [78] In present-day Idaho, the state highway ID-78 roughly follows the path of the South Alternate route of the Oregon Trail.It’s not always easy. Sometimes the effort is exhausting. When it comes to the exercise of sympathetic imagination in reading, it helps when the prose is pleasant and the story a good one. Because characters can disappoint. Spanning two thousand miles and traversing six states from Missouri to the Pacific coast, the Oregon Trail is the route that made America. In the fifteen years before the Civil War, when 400,000 pioneers used the trail to emigrate West - scholars still regard this as the largest land migration in history - it united the coasts, doubled the size of the country, and laid the groundwork for the railroads. Today, amazingly, the trail is all but forgotten. An Emigrant Train from the top of Big Mountain entering the valley of the Great Salt Lake". Utah Division of Parks and Recreation. Archived from the original on February 11, 2006.