Oregon Trail National Parks

"When you start over these wide plains, let no one leave dependent on his best friend for any thing; for if you do, you will certainly have a blow-out before you get far." John Shively, 1846

History of the Oregon Trail

On to Oregon! It all began with a crude network of rutted traces across the and from the Missouri River to the Willamette River that was used by nearly 400,000 people. Today the 2,170-mile Oregon Trail still evokes an instant image, a ready recollection of the settlement of this continent, of the differences between American Indians and white settlers, and of new horizons. In 1840 only three states existed west of the Mississippi River. Maine’s boundary with Canada was undefined. The western boundaries of the Nation lay roughly along the Continental Divide. Within 10 years the United States and Great Britain had drawn a boundary that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The western boundary moved from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. In another 40 years successive waves of emigrants completely eliminated any sense of frontier, changed the way of life of the American Indians, and ravaged many wild animal species, especially the herds of buffalo. Plows and barbed wire subdued the prairies. Transcontinental railroads knitted the great distances together.

Mountain men, Trappers and Explorers

The first Europeans to see the trans-Mississippi West were the mountain men, trappers, and the maritime explorers along the west coast. In Canada, the Hudson’s Bay Company fur frontier was approaching the Columbia River basin. In 1812 John Jacob Astor established Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia in a countermove and sent Robert Stuart overland to carry dispatches east. Stuart found South Pass by following a Crow Indian trail. Only 7,000 feet above sea level, with easy gradients, South Pass has an attractive geographic proximity to the upper reaches of the Platte River. Both were determining factors in the routing of the Oregon Trail. The early frontiersmen found the passes, crossed the great rivers, and defined the vast reaches of the western interior. From the beginning these explorers contributed to a growing campaign to make the Oregon Country a part of either the United States or Great Britain, according to their own sometimes confused loyalties.

The First Settlers

Economic depressions in 1837 and 1841 frustrated farmers and businessmen alike. The collapse of the international fur trade in 1839 intensified the hard times, and concerns of British domination of the Northwest grew. At the same time, eastern churches saw the American Indians of the Oregon Country as ready candidates for European ideas of civilization. Churches formed ardent missionary societies to create an active appetite for Christianity. In 1836 Marcus Whitman and his new wife, Narcissa, along with Henry and Eliza Spalding, headed for Oregon as missionaries. The letters they sent home publicized the opportunities and advantages of Oregon. Many people for many reasons had become interested in Oregon, but it was not until 1841 that the first group with serious intent to emigrate left the banks of the Missouri River and headed west. In 1843,nearly 1,000 completed the trip – an omen of the multitudes to follow.

Location

The Oregon Trail was never a clearly defined track. In places the wagons passed in columns that might be hundreds of yards apart; those traces shifted with the effects of weather and use. In the course of time nature obliterated many of the fainter traces. Road builders followed the deeper, more permanent traces because they marked the best route. The Oregon Trail was quickly being forgotten. In 1906, 76-year-old Ezra Meeker, Oregon settler in 1852 and a tireless champion of the trail, set out in a covered wagon to retrace the route from west to east. Among his goals: to create a general interest in marking the route, to raise public awareness of the trail’s history and heritage, and to point out the loss and damage resulting from careless disregard. Meeker met with Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge, testified before Congress, and made several other publicity trips over the trail before his death in 1928. Today the National Park Service, in concert with the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, and the states of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington strive to protect this legacy.

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