The Oregon Trail was laid by fur traders and trappers from about 1811 to 1840 and was only passable on foot or on horseback. Other towns used as supply points in Missouri included Old Franklin, Arrow Rock, and Fort Osage.[46]. [21][22] They were led initially by John Gantt, a former U.S. Army Captain and fur trader who was contracted to guide the train to Fort Hall for $1 per person. They normally used the north side of the Platte Riverthe same route used 20 years later by the Mormon Trail. src="http://c.statcounter.com/9693962/0/d957fd5e/1/" By the end of the 1860s, it is estimated that approximately 500,000 pioneers had traveled overland from the settled East to the uncertain West. The hundreds of abandoned ships, whose crews had deserted in San Francisco Bay in 184950, showed many thousands chose to do this. 2531; "Emigrant Trails of Southern Idaho"; Bureau of Land Management & Idaho State Historical Society;1993; pp 117125 ASIN: B000KE2KTU, Soda Springs quotes Idaho State Historical Society, For an Oregon-California trail map up to the junction in Idaho NPS. A belt and folding knives were carried by nearly all men and boys. The HBC had nearly a complete monopoly on trading (and most governing issues) in the Columbia District, or Oregon Country as it was referred to by the Americans, and also in Rupert's Land. St. Joseph had good steamboat connections to St. Louis and other ports on the combined Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi River systems. There were other possible migration paths for early settlers, miners, or travelers to California or Oregon besides the Oregon trail prior to the establishment of the transcontinental railroads. Still seeing this message? [6] This knowledge would be incorporated into the concatenated trail segments as the Oregon Trail took its early shape. To avoid crossing the Salt River (which drains into the Snake River) which runs down Star Valley the Lander Road crossed the river when it was small and stayed west of the Salt River. The show stars Rod Taylor, Tony Becker, Darleen Carr, Charles Napier, and Ken Swofford. There is no estimate on how many used it to return East.[91]. [36] Women were significantly underrepresented in the California Gold Rush, and sex ratios did not reach essential equality in California (and other western states) until about 1950. During that journey Robert Stuart and his companions discovered the South Pass in southwestern Wyoming, a 20-mile (32-km) gap in the Rocky Mountains that offered the lowest (and easiest) crossing of the Continental Divide. Those on the north side of the Platte could usually wade the shallow river if they needed to visit the fort. The once treacherous 50-mile (80km) trip could be done in less than a day. The Oregon Trail, which stretched for about 2,000 miles (3,200 km), flourished as the main means for hundreds of thousands of emigrants to reach the Northwest from the early 1840s through the 1860s. Nearly all of the settlers in the 1843 wagon trains arrived in the Willamette Valley by early October. [citation needed]. Updates? WebThe covers were made from waterproofed cotton or linen canvas. [80] Mules were, however, notoriously ill-tempered. He had just completed a journey through much of western Canada and most of the Columbia River drainage system. There a passage could be made with a lot of shovel work to cut down the banks or the travelers could find an already established crossing. Some were more interested in exploring the West. When the pioneers were told at Fort Hall by agents from the Hudson's Bay Company that they should abandon their wagons there and use pack animals the rest of the way, Whitman disagreed and volunteered to lead the wagons to Oregon. One of the most controversial design decisions I made is familiar to everyone who has played The Oregon Trail. [84][85] Marcy's guide correctly suggested that the consumption of wild grapes, greens, and onions could help prevent the disease and that if vegetables were not available, citric acid could be drunk with sugar and water. After a few days' travel they soon discovered that steep canyons, waterfalls and impassable rapids made travel by river impossible. After crossing the Snake River the 230-mile (370km) cutoff headed north from Fort Hall toward Big Southern Butte following the Lost River part of the way. The story of the Oregon Trail inspired the educational video game series The Oregon Trail, which became widely popular in the 1980s and early 1990s. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Other trails were developed that traveled further along the South Platte to avoid local Native American hot spots. Some settlers started drifting into Iowa in 1833. From there U.S. Highway 30 which follows the Platte River is a better approximate path for those traveling the north side of the Platte.[51]. Between 1841 and 1869, hundreds of thousands of people traveled The North West Company started establishing more forts and trading posts of its own. Only some partial written copies of the Army records and notes recorded in several diaries have survived. They used pack animals for the rest of the trip to Fort Walla Walla and then floated by boat to Fort Vancouver to get supplies before returning to start their missions. [70] The trails on the north side joined the trail from Three Island Crossing about 17 miles (27km) west of Glenns Ferry on the north side of the Snake River. [65] The trail follows the Bear River northwest to present-day Soda Springs. [89] Travelers had pushed along the relatively easy path to Fort Laramie with their luxury items but discarded them before the difficult mountain crossing ahead, and after discovering that many items could be purchased at the forts or located for free along the way. [108], Airborne diseases also commonly affected travelers. Despite modern depictions, hardly anyone actually rode in the wagons; it was too dusty, too rough, and too hard on the livestock. Another branch headed almost due west past Gray's Lake to rejoin the main trail about 10 miles (16km) west of Fort Hall. Use Arrow keys to point the rifle (novice hunters) [40] From Salt Lake City the telegraph line followed much of the Mormon/California/Oregon trails to Omaha, Nebraska. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Step 2: The longest trip was the voyage of about 13,600 to 15,000 miles (21,900 to 24,100km) on an uncomfortable sailing ship rounding the treacherous, cold, and dangerous Cape Horn between Antarctica and South America and then sailing on to California or Oregon. During its heyday, roughly 1840s to about 1869, the majority of long arms used were muzzle loaders, either flintlock or percussion, and these were [18], In September 1840, Robert Newell, Joseph L. Meek, and their families reached Fort Walla Walla with three wagons that they had driven from Fort Hall. Another busy "jumping off point" was St. Josephestablished in 1843. The group set out for California, but about half the party left the original group at Soda Springs, Idaho, and proceeded to the Willamette Valley in Oregon, leaving their wagons at Fort Hall. With the exception of most of the 180,000 population increase in California, most of these people living away from the coast traveled over parts of the Oregon Trail and its many extensions and cutoffs to get to their new residences. During the busy season there were several ferry boats and steamboats available to transport travelers to the Kansas shore where they started their travels westward. I-86 heads east, then northeast to American Falls and Pocatello following the Oregon Trail, while I-84 heads southeast to the State border with Utah. Several towns in Nebraska were used as jumping off places with Omaha eventually becoming a favorite after about 1855. They increased the cost of traveling the trail by roughly $30 per wagon but decreased the speed of the transit from about 160 to 170 days in 1843 to 120 to 140 days in 1860. TL/DR: People chose Oregon over the closer Great Plains because Oregon has much better weather, more resources such as timber, fewer hostile Indian In 2014, a musical named The Trail to Oregon!, based on The Oregon Trail game, with music and lyrics by Jeff Blim and a book by Jeff Blim, Nick Lang and Matt Lang was performed in Chicago and later posted to YouTube by StarKid Productions. [84] Collecting buffalo chips was a common task for children and was one chore that even very young children could carry out. Located about half way on both the California and Oregon trails many thousands of later travelers used Salt Lake City and other Utah cities as an intermediate stop for selling or trading excess goods or tired livestock for fresh livestock, repairs, supplies or fresh vegetables. Members of the party later disagreed over the size of the party, one stating 160 adults and children were in the party, while another counted 105. Beginning in 1834, it visited the American Rendezvous to undersell the American traderslosing money but undercutting the American fur traders. In 1810 fur entrepreneur John Jacob Astor organized an expedition of frontiersmen to head westward and establish a trading post for his American Fur Company in Oregon. In 1847 Young led a small, fast-moving group from their Winter Quarters encampments near Omaha, Nebraska, and their approximately 50 temporary settlements on the Missouri River in Iowa including Council Bluffs. Use of the trail declined after the first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, making the trip west substantially faster, cheaper, and safer. By 1825 the HBC started using two brigades, each setting out from opposite ends of the express routeone from Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River and the other from York Factory on Hudson Bayin spring and passing each other in the middle of the continent. Women also reacted and responded, often enthusiastically, to the landscape of the West. In present-day Idaho, I-84 roughly follows the Oregon Trail from the Idaho-Oregon State border at the Snake River. This last crossing of the Snake could be done on bull boats while swimming the stock across. They initially started out in 1848 with trains of several thousand emigrants, which were rapidly split into smaller groups to be more easily accommodated at the limited springs and acceptable camping places on the trail. Fort Laramie was a former fur trading outpost originally named Fort John that was purchased in 1848 by the U.S. Army to protect travelers on the trails. Press Keyboard right side: Alt+Enter keys to switch to full screen game play, and Alt+Enter keys to return. Individuals buying most of the needed items would end up spending between $150$200 per person. That year the British parliament passed a statute applying the laws of Upper Canada to the district and giving the HBC power to enforce those laws. The basic route follows river valleys as grass and water were absolutely necessary. Initially, the main jumping off point was the common head of the Santa Fe Trail and Oregon trailIndependence, and Kansas City. The fort quickly became the center of activity in the Pacific Northwest. Consensus interpretations, as found in John Faragher's book, Women and Men on the Overland Trail (1979), held that men and women's power within marriage was uneven. Besides describing and naming many of the rivers and mountains in the Intermountain West and Pacific Northwest, they often kept diaries of their travels and were available as guides and consultants when the trail started to become open for general travel. 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. This lowered the cost of the trip to about $50 per person for food and other items. The Sweetwater would have to be crossed up to nine times before the trail crosses over the Continental Divide at South Pass, Wyoming. Other missionaries, mostly husband and wife teams using wagon and pack trains, established missions in the Willamette Valley, as well as various locations in the future states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. As dictated by southern Congressional members, the 2,800-mile (4,500km) route ran from St. Louis, Missouri through Arkansas, Oklahoma Indian Territory, Texas, New Mexico Territory, and across the Sonora Desert before ending in San Francisco, California. Ferries here transferred them across the Green River. Professional tools used by blacksmiths, carpenters, and farmers were carried by nearly all. It is believed that the swifter flowing rivers in Wyoming helped prevent the germs from spreading.[52]. Nathaniel Wyeth, the original founder of Fort Hall in 1834, writes in his diary that they found a ford across the Snake River 4 miles (6.4km) southwest of where he founded Fort Hall. [54] From Fort Bridger, the main trail, comprising several variants, veered northwest over the Bear River Divide and descended to the Bear River Valley. At 7 am the bugle sounded, the wagonmaster shouted "Wagons roll! Therefore, new players must try beating the game as a banker before trying it at other difficulty levels. Trapping took place in the fall when the fur became prime. After crossing the South Platte River the Oregon Trail follows the North Platte River out of Nebraska into Wyoming. [71][72], Goodale's Cutoff, established in 1862 on the north side of the Snake River, formed a spur of the Oregon Trail. From the letter of Anna Maria King, in Covered Wagon Women, Volume 1, by Kenneth L. Holmes, ebook version, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1983, Page 41. Count diphtheria, dysentery, drowning, accident, and exhaustion as some of the dangers along the Oregon Trail. Women seldom went alone. Emergency supplies, repairs, and livestock were often provided by local residents in California, Oregon, and Utah for late travelers on the trail who were hurrying to beat the snow. After ferrying across the Missouri River and establishing wagon trains near what became Omaha, the Mormons followed the northern bank of the Platte River in Nebraska to Fort Laramie in present-day Wyoming. Some of the company used it to raise their bread.[31]. In 1836, Henry H. Spalding and Marcus Whitman traveled west to establish the Whitman Mission near modern-day Walla Walla, Washington. Large wagons needed mulitple teams. It rejoined the California Trail at Cassia Creek near the City of Rocks. Despite Stuarts detailed account of the Astor expedition, the South Pass remained largely ignored. Following the discovery of gold, California remained the destination of choice for most emigrants on the trail up to 1860, with almost 200,000 people traveling there between 1849 and 1860. in Pacific Northwest etc", "Robert Newell and Joseph Meek reach Fort Walla Walla", "The Wagon Train of 1843: The Great Migration", "An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859", Report of Explorations across the Great Basin of the Territory of Utah, "Railroad ticket 1870 Transcontinental Railroad Statistics", "Franklin Missouri The Beginning of the Santa Fe Trail", "Chronological List of Fort Laramie History", "Lincoln County Photos II-Wyoming Tales and Trails", "An Emigrant Train from the top of Big Mountain entering the valley of the Great Salt Lake", "It's Sam Hensley-Not Hansel-Who Discovered Cutoff", The National Oregon-California Trail Center, Northern Nevada and Utah, Southern Idaho Tail Map, "The Oregon Trail - The '70s NBC Show Starring Rod Taylor Comes to DVD with Unaired Episodes", The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 18401860, WashingtonRochambeau Revolutionary Route, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oregon_Trail&oldid=1148519953, National Historic Trails of the United States, Trails and roads in the American Old West, Units of the National Landscape Conservation System, Wikipedia pending changes protected pages, Articles needing additional references from May 2017, All articles needing additional references, Articles with unsourced statements from May 2013, Articles with unsourced statements from December 2021, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2011, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2017, Wikipedia articles needing rewrite from September 2018, All articles with vague or ambiguous time, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 6 April 2023, at 17:36. 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