Trials on the Trail

From prosperous New Englanders and Midwestern families with sturdy well-provisioned wagons and ample livestock, to penniless frontiersmen who joined wagon trains as hired hands, to the young and restless who could not resist the lure of a far away adventure - the early Oregon trail blazers had much in common.  They were touchy and quarrelsome for one thing, had little knowledge  of wilderness survival or the hardships that lay before them.  They did have a sturdy determination to survive the brutal tests of the Oregon Trail.

They shared a common enemy - time.  Their traveling season was short and one week difference could be the death of them.  Before the prairie grasses were up in early May, it was time to leave Missouri where they had waited all the winter through.  Their livestock would not survive if they left later in the Spring.  The westernmost mountains had be to crossed before mid-October when the snows came.  They had five months to cover 2,000 miles at an average of 15-20 miles a day if the skies were sunny and clear and the rivers were not swollen from rains. 

The opening stretch to the Platte River through present day Kansas to Nebraska was usually an "easy" journey.  Following that, they went through what pioneers called "the mile wide and an inch deep" section along the Platte River.  The land got gradually higher, more broken and more arid. 

They marked their journey with landmarks like Chimney Rock and Scott's Bluff on the way to Laramie where fresh supplies awaited them.  Independence Rock was the marker where the route left the Platte River and traveled across the Rockies at the South Pass.  Following the main route to Fort Bridger and then northwest to Fort Hall brought them to the Snake River Canyon at Farewell Bend.  Before crossing the Blue Mountains, the Grand Valley was a welcome respite before the mighty Columbia River awaited them.  Through the Willamette Valley the route diverged.  Here cautious travelers took jolting trails over the Cascades, or if they were risk takers, they built makeshift rafts and plunged down the Columbia.  Which would you have been?

Next time - Hazards Galore
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On February 19, 1792, George Washington signs the United States Postal Act creating the United State Post Office.