Oregon Trail

“ Oregon Trail Monument Expedition. Of the old emigrant trail Clara Blake Morgan has written:
Aged and desolate, grizzled and still,
It creeps in slow curves round the base of the hill;
Of its once busy traffic is left little trace,
Not a hoof-print or wheel track is fresh on its face.
The Oregon trail is one of the most noted trails in America. Originally only a pathway, it was later worn deep and wide by the hoofs of stock and the grinding of the wagon wheels of the Oregon immigrants into a well-beaten wagon road. ”

“ Along this great trail crossing the waters men bent their steps toward Oregon and California, men from the banks of the Missouri, from Illinois, and now even from far-off New England—where at last they had learned the “easy way West” and had begun to travel, as their friends to the southward had been doing for so many years. Thus, then, began the great Oregon trail, this road that might, with justice, have been called an open highway when Frémont “explored” the Rockies, albeit a highway almost unsettled, as it is to-day over much of its length, though peopled thick with mighty memories. ”

“ The Santa Fé; and Oregon trails from Independence and Kansas City were identical for forty miles or thereabouts, out to the town of Gardner, Kansas. From there the Santa Fé Trail bore on to the west and finally to the southwest, while the Oregon Trail bore steadily on to the northwest and encountered the Platte valley below Grand Island in what is now Nebraska. At the forks of the road, the historian Chittenden says, "a simple signboard was seen which carried the words 'Road to Oregon,' thus pointing the way for two thousand miles. ”

“ THE OREGON TRAIL, 1843-57.
We drove out of Pacific Springs at a little after noon and stopped at the summit to dedicate the monument. Then we left the summit and drove twelve miles to the point called Oregon Slough, where we put up the tent after dark. [194]
The reader may think of the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains as a precipitous defile through narrow canyons and deep gorges. Nothing is farther from the fact. One can drive through this Pass for several miles without realizing that the dividing line between the waters of the Pacific and those of the Atlantic has been passed. ”

“ The graves of the dead pioneers had all been leveled by the hoofs of stock and the lapse of time.
The country remains as it was in '52. There the trail is to be seen miles and miles ahead, worn bare and deep, with but one narrow track where there used to be a dozen, and with the beaten path that vegetation has not yet recovered from the scourge of passing hoofs and tires of wagons years ago. ”

“ Looking up, I saw a tall peak rising among the woods. Something impelled me to climb; I had not felt for many a day such strength and elasticity of limb. An hour and a half of slow and often intermittent labor brought me to the very summit; and emerging from the dark shadows of the rocks and pines, I stepped forth into the light, and walking along the sunny verge of a precipice, seated myself on its extreme point. Looking between the mountain peaks to the westward, the pale blue prairie was stretching to the farthest horizon like a serene and tranquil ocean. ”

“ We go into ventures without fully counting the cost. Perhaps that was the case, to a certain extent, in this venture; the work did look larger from the car window than from the camp.
Nevertheless, I have no regrets to express or exultation to proclaim. The trail has not yet been fully or properly marked. We have made a good beginning, however, and let us hope the end will soon become an accomplished fact. Monumenting the old Oregon Trail means more than the mere preservation in memory of that great highway ”

“ The ox team was chosen as a typical reminder of pioneer days. The Oregon Trail, it must be remembered, is essentially an ox-team trail. No more effective instrument, therefore, could have been chosen to attract attention, arouse enthusiasm, and secure aid in forwarding the work, than this living symbol of the old days.
Indeed, too much attention, in one sense, was attracted. I had scarcely driven the outfit away from my own dooryard before the wagon and wagon cover, and even the map of the old trail on the sides of the cover, began to be defaced. ”

“ TRAIL OF THE ASTORIANS 235 The two companies of half famished travelers struggled along on opposite sides of the Snake until they emerged into the open country. Mr. Hunt, on the Idaho side, found an Indian camp, near where Weiser now stands, where he for- tunately was able to obtain an Indian guide to lead him along the natural highway across the Blue Mountains to the Colum- bia, a route first used by the Indians and later forming part of the old Oregon Trail, and now traversed by the main line of the Oregon- Washington Railway. ”

“ These men rode horseback ahead of the train, each armed with a rifle and carrying axes, picks and shovels, to fight Indians if necessary, but to be sure to make a road the ox teams could draw the wagons over. This party of men made the road — The Oregon Trail — from day to day; and they were "The Royal Sappers and Miners" that made the way across the two thousand miles of plains, deserts, sage, brush and mountains from the Missouri to the Columbia. ”

“ Seventy years ago he became one of the trail-blazers of the Farther West. In 1852, with his young wife and child, he made the hazardous journey over plains and mountains all the way from Iowa to Oregon by ox team. Then, after fifty-four years of struggle in helping to develop the country beyond the Cascades, this undaunted pioneer decided to reblaze the almost lost Oregon Trail.
An old "prairie schooner" was rebuilt, and a yoke of sturdy oxen was trained to make the trip. With one companion and a faithful dog, the veteran started out. ”

“ The Mormons followed this national road when they trekked to the valley of Salt Lake in 1847––a dolorous path to many.
Because the Oregon Trail was nature’s way, man and commerce made it their way. Road sites are not like city sites––made to order; they are discovered. For 17 that reason the pioneer railway transcontinental also followed this trail. The Union Pacific marks with iron what so many of the emigrants marked with their tears and their graves. From the mouth of the Platte to the heart of the Rocky Mountains and beyond is a continuous cemetery of nameless tombs. ”

“ It would be most fortunate to have the American people turn to the building of great highways as memorials. A transcontinental highway on the line of the Oregon Trail as a memorial for the Oregon pioneers would be then inevitable. ”

“ During the earlier years of the period 1849-1860 the emigrant and gold-seeker almost monopolized the California and Oregon Trail. Mail and freight service were in their infancy. The years 1849-1854 may be well portrayed by a study of the fortune hunters and emigrants. Further unity is lent to such a period by the fact that, with a few minor exceptions, the route of the trail as established by the end of 1849 remained the same throughout the ensuing five years. The period of the late fifties saw the emigrant sharing the trail with stage-coaches and long trains of freight wagons. ”

“ Its map lays "The Old Salt Lake Trail" exactly on the route of the Oregon trail as far as Fort Bridger, in Southwestern Wyoming. But the Oregon migrations are not hinted at by a single word in the body of the book. The authors' account of them could not have been crowded out by more weighty matters, as all the disjointed fragments of Indian hunting and fighting and drunken carousal, whether happening on the line of the trail or not, are crowded in. ”

“ In its earliest years the Oregon trail knew only the fur traders, those nameless pioneers who possessed an accurate rule-of-thumb knowledge of every hill and valley of the mountains nearly a generation before the surveyor and his transit brought them within the circle of recorded facts. ”

“ From this time forward the character of the country was changing every day. We had left behind us the great arid deserts, meagerly covered by the tufted buffalo-grass, with its pale green hue, and its short shrivelled blades. The plains before us were carpeted with rich herbage sprinkled with flowers. In place of buffalo we found plenty of prairie-hens, and bagged them by dozens without leaving the trail. In three or four days we saw before us the forests and meadows of Council Grove. ”

“ Trailing after these animals in quest of food and skins, came the Indians. Then followed the fur-trading mountaineers, the home-seeking pioneers, the gold seekers, the soldiers, and the cowboys. Now railroad trains, automobiles, and even aëroplanes go whizzing along over parts of the old highway.
Every turn in the Trail holds some tale of danger and daring or romance. Most of the stories have been forever lost in the passing away of those who took part in this ox-team migration across our continent. ”

“ The men who wore deepest the wheel marks of the Oregon Trail were neither trading nor trapping men, but homebuilding men—the first real emigrants to go West with the intent of making homes beyond the Rockies.
The Oregon Trail had been laid out by the explorers of the fur trade. ”

“ Long after leaving him, and late this afternoon, in the midst of a gloomy and barren prairie, we came suddenly upon the great Pawnee trail, leading from their villages on the Platte to their war and hunting grounds to the southward. Here every summer pass the motley concourse; thousands of savages, men, women, and children, horses and mules, laden with their weapons and implements, and an innumerable multitude of unruly wolfish dogs, who have not acquired the civilized accomplishment of barking, but howl like their wild cousins of the prairie. ”

“ Tying the trail-rope by way of bridle round the animal's jaw, and leaping upon his back, he got in advance of the remaining fugitives, while we, soon bringing them together, drove them in a crowd up to the tents, where each man caught and saddled his own. Then we heard lamentations and curses; for half the horses had broke their hobbles, and many were seriously galled by attempting to run in fetters.
It was late that morning before we were on the march; and early in the afternoon we were compelled to encamp, for a thunder-gust came up and suddenly enveloped us in whirling sheets of rain. ”

“ Refreshed by the long halt, we began to climb the Blue Mountains, where the trail led over such steep ascents that it became necessary to yoke all our cattle to one wagon, pull it a mile or two up what was much like a cliff, and then drive the oxen back for another load, thus winning our advance with the greatest difficulty, and after the most severe labor traveling no more than seven miles in one day. ”

“ But their mission, if any survive till now, is past. The paths, surveyed of the beasts and opened by these pioneers to the feet of priests, explorers, and traders, have let in the influences that in time destroyed all these forest lovers braved the solitude for. The trace has become the railroad, and the smell of the gasolene motor is even on the once wild Oregon trail; for, in general, it has been said of the forest part of the valley, "where there is a railway to-day there was a path a century and a quarter ago" (and that means longer ago) ”

“ THE PLATTE AND THE DESERT.
WE were now at the end of our solitary journeyings along the St. Joseph trail. On the evening of the twenty-third of May we encamped near its junction with the old legitimate trail of the Oregon emigrants. We had ridden long that afternoon, trying in vain to find wood and water, until at length we saw the sunset sky reflected from a pool encircled by bushes and rocks. The water lay in the bottom of a hollow, the smooth prairie gracefully rising in ocean-like swells on every side. We pitched our tents by it ”

“ Is it any wonder that the old trail was worn so deep that even now in places it looks like a great canal? At one point near Split Rock, Wyoming, I found the road cut so deep in the solid sandstone that the kingbolt of my wagon dragged on the high center.
The pioneer army was a moving mass of human beings and dumb brutes, at times mixed in inextricable confusion, a hundred feet wide or more. Sometimes two columns of wagons, traveling on parallel lines and near each other, would serve as a barrier to prevent loose stock from crossing ”

“ This time, however, it was with Dave and Dandy quietly chewing their cud in the car, while I enjoyed all the luxuries of an overland train.
I began vividly to realize the wide expanse of country covered, as we passed first one and then another of the camping places. I was led to wonder whether or not I should have undertaken the work if I could have seen the trail stretched out, as I saw it like a panorama from the car window. I sometimes think not. All of us at times undertake things that look bigger after completion than they did in our vision of them. ”

“ We passed among rocks and pine trees so dark, that for a while we could scarcely see our way. The country in front was wild and broken, half hill, half plain, partly open and partly covered with woods of pine and oak. Barriers of lofty mountains encompassed it; the woods were fresh and cool in the early morning; the peaks of the mountains were wreathed with mist, and sluggish vapors were entangled among the forests upon their sides. At length the black pinnacle of the tallest mountain was tipped with gold by the rising sun. ”

“ Even so late as this we are many years in advance of the railways; which indeed do not even to-day occupy the old Oregon trail throughout its entire length, though using much of it on both sides of that easy South Pass country, once so useful to the trappers and wagon travelers, but not so essential to railway engineers looking for more direct lines across the wastes. Perhaps we shall some day see a line of rails follow throughout the two thousand miles of this ancient trail. Even so, our American tourists would still go to Europe in search of ruins and history and memories! ”