Overland Trails (Oregon Trail)

Overland Trails (Oregon Trail)
By: S.D., K.K., S.S., R.W.

Overland Trails Background

* 2,000 mile trip from Missouri River to Oregon and California took 7 months (15 miles/day)
* West along Platte River, cross Continental Divide at South Pass (Wyoming), trail along Snake River (Idaho), Oregon’s Blue Mountains and rafting down Columbia River (California--cross Humbolt Sink and Sierra Nevadas)
* Slow, dangerous, expensive, tedious, exhausting
* 5,000 settlers to Oregon by 1845 and 3,000 settlers to California by 1848
* Some arrive by ship, but too expensive

Motives

* Promise of economic opportunity (Panic of 1837)
* Healthy surroundings (malaria-prone Midwest)
* Sense of adventure, curiosity
* Women idealized as “Pinoeer’s Search for an Ideal Home”

Traveling

* Few traveled alone because need help to ford rivers or cross mountains with heavy wagons
* Family, join larger group “train”, “pilot” fur trapper, semimilitary constitution for a leader, occasional dissent
* Start as soon as prairies green (grazing)
* Men move equipment and animals
* Women cook and keep track of children
* Community help if fatality to arrange burial and support survivors

Difficulties

* Dangers from Indian attack small (increased with Gold Rush, white attack Indians more common)
* Cholera (thousand a year 1849-1850s), drowning, shooting and ax accidents, children run over

End of Overland Trails

* 1860—300,000 people reach Oregon or California
* “Pioneer tales” show heroism rather than truth
* Transcontinental Railroad completion in 1869 ended wagon train era