Along the Oregon Trail

I'm the Rockhopper, and I'm standing on one of the last remnants of the historic Oregon Trail. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a pioneer heading west? Stick around and find out. I'm Zachariah Smith. We'll be heading out come daylight, so you best be ready. Come along with us. We've got a lot of miles to cover. The Oregon Trail is a roughly 2,000 mile route that started in Independence, Missouri and stretched to Oregon City in what is now the state of Oregon. Long before it became the Oregon Trail, it was a network of Indian trails that were later used by fur trappers until 1840. That's when economic downturns left farmers and businessmen searching for new opportunities. Driven by the government's promise of free land, a push to eclipse British settlement of the territory, and the call of manifest destiny, the first wagon train set out from Independence in 1841 with about 80 men, women, and children, led by guide Thomas Fitzpatrick. In 1843, the first major wagon train set out with about 1,000 people and 120 wagons on a journey that would usually take five to six months. They rode prairie schooners, named as such due to their covers resembling ships' sails drifting across the horizon. Determined to reach what was billed as the land of milk and honey, a stream of pioneers loaded their wagons and headed west, braving harsh weather, obstacles such as mountains and rivers, and dangers such as rattlesnakes. Some never reached the end of the trail. We'll be heading out come daylight tomorrow. Yolk up those oxen and get the horses ready! Let's get the covers back on these wagons. We've got miles to do and a long way to go. We started our journey way back in Independence, Missouri, and our destination is Oregon City, out in the Oregon Territory. We're committed now. We've made it this far and there's no turning back. We'll get there even if it kills us, and it just might. Most of us are traveling in prairie schooners like this one. They're smaller and lighter than the Conestoga wagons. You might think that we spend most of our time riding in the wagons, but we don't. We spend much of our day walking alongside the wagons. We can lighten the load for the oxen that way, and we've got all our stuff in there, like furniture and things. Another reason we spend so much time walking alongside the wagons instead of riding in them is because it's a bone-shaking bumpy ride. It'll shake you to your core. You'll be sore and tired, more so than if you've been walking. You'll get more of a beating than a stubborn mule. Only a few hundred miles into the trip and we realized it was not a good idea to carry furniture. So we dumped it at the side. Some of it we burned for our fires. It was much more important to have our staples. Flour, coffee, sugar, salt, and bacon. Things we need to have to survive out here. I'll tell you what, I get a big hankering sometimes for some fresh fruits and vegetables. One of our oxen died of exhaustion. We didn't let it go to waste, though. It fed our entire wagon train. For once we had full bellies on the trail. And what we couldn't eat, well, we left to the coyotes. The route we're traveling now was originally established by fur trappers about 30 years earlier. It was way back about 1811. It was used by people on horseback as a trading route for their furs. And in the 1840s is when the pioneers really started utilizing this trail to head west. You might wonder why we're willing to go across a harsh landscape like this. Well, the government has promised us land out west if we're willing to settle it. That seems like a good enough deal for me. This is what we've been seeing for the past several hundred miles. It's been hot, it's been dusty, it's been dry. But now there's a chill in the air. October's here. We hoped to make it by September, but that didn't work out. It's been tougher going than we expected. We'll just be glad to get there. A lot of people have perished on this trail. We've got to get there before the snow and rains of winter hit. Winter's not far away. And we've still got hundreds of miles to go. We've got to get past the Blue Mountains of Oregon before we can drop down into the Columbia River Basin. As we head west, snow-capped peaks accompany us to our right. And there are mountains to our left as well. But on occasion, we will pass a broke-down wagon that's been abandoned. Most of the time, though, we'll try and improvise a part, put something together to keep those wagons going. At the end of the day, get a fire going, put on the skillet, throw in some bacon, make some biscuits and bake them up. In a Dutch oven, maybe. That'll be our dinner sometimes. Occasionally, we'll go out and we'll hunt some fresh game. Get a rabbit, maybe. Maybe something a little larger. Feed all of us. We do what we can out here. After we've had our supper, we might sit around the campfire and sing a few songs. Well, I fought the biggest battle that was ever on Bunker Hill. Yes, I fought the biggest battle that was ever on Bunker Hill. Tell some tales. We might even dance a little. Helps lift our spirits. Makes us feel a little better. Forget about the hardships of being on the trail. Some wagon trains make a decision to continue every day. Others, such as ours, decide to observe the Sabbath. Take a day of rest. We'll read verses from the Bible. We might mend clothes. Fix things up a bit. Just take a much-needed break. Even though we've lost a few of our people along the way, we still ask the good Lord for continued safe passage and to look over us for the rest of the journey. Well, we're not too far from the Columbia River now. Got a little over a hundred miles to go, I reckon. And once we get there, we'll follow the Columbia River all the way to Oregon City. The mountains will be behind us, and the going should be better. We'll have water alongside us. We can drink and we can bathe. That'll be a refreshing change from this god-awful hot, dusty desert we've been going through for the past month. It's been 1,700 miles to get to here. We've still got 300 or more miles to go. We're at Flagstaff Hill, inside the Oregon Territory. All summer, it was hot. It was dusty. It seemed unbearable at times. But now that it's mid-October, nights are getting down close to freezing. We're going to bundle up, stay warm by the campfire, and keep thawing out, as much as we can, anyway. The mornings we wake up, it's cold. Hard to get going sometimes, but we got to. Going through this part of the Oregon Territory, every day we start smelling like sagebrush, and the wagons, too, as we plow through all of it. It's not a bad smell, though. It's kind of a nice scent. There seem to be a lot of accidents that happen along the way. Accidental gunshot wounds, people dying that way. Of course, there's always drownings across the rivers. Cholera has been the number one killer on the trail, but there are other diseases that take their toll as well, like dysentery. I lost my youngest daughter to cholera. We had to bury her in an unmarked grave beside the trail. And still, my Annie Laurie, gave me her promise, gave me her promise true. And never shall I leave that poor old place where lay the swan and the crow. It was a place that is... There's people, especially children, that accidentally get in front of wheels and get run over and die. Conflicts with Indians are rare out here. In fact, we've hardly seen any, and the few we have seen have been very peaceful. This is the stark and barren country that the immigrants pass through on the trail. Take a moment to really contemplate that. Aside from a few Native Americans, there weren't many people out here. This landscape was alien to those from the Midwest and the East, and must have seemed harsh and unforgiving compared to the relative comfort from which they'd come. The rivers and lush forests of the East replaced by the desolation of the West. She's a mighty river All the Indians have a long road about the way It's to do with gifts There aren't many remnants of the original Oregon Trail left today, such as the one I'm standing on right now. Most of the Oregon Trail has been covered over by roads, highways, and interstates. It's estimated that 400,000 people set out on the Oregon Trail, and out of those, about 10% died along the way. There are an average of 22 graves per mile along the Oregon Trail, and it's an eerie feeling knowing that right now, as I walk this, I could be passing the bones of pioneers buried right here. Today, not much remains of the evidence of the pioneers passing through here, except for an occasional etching in the rock, such as this one with the date of 1848. One of the early pioneers appears to be William Jones, 1841. Bill McKnight looks like an Oregon Trail pioneer from 1857. The Oregon Trail ended in 1869 upon completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, which provided a cheaper, faster, safer, and much easier passage to the West. The Oregon Trail started fading into oblivion, and that's when Ezra Meeker, who had traveled the trail as a teenager, decided to keep the memory of the Oregon Trail alive. So he set out to go along the trail when he was like 60 or 70 or whatever, and he became quite a celebrity and even met President Teddy Roosevelt. This is a photograph of Ezra Meeker. He came west along the trail in 1852, and again numerous times later. Today, there are memorials to the trail, such as this one near Baker City, Oregon. He wanted us to keep the memory of the Oregon Trail alive, and now we have memorials not only to the trail, but to Ezra Meeker too. Here's a newspaper article from 1927 on Ezra Meeker that I found pasted on an old shed. Occasionally you might find one of these concrete markers indicating where the Oregon Trail once was. Sometimes you'll find a fiberglass marker such as this one. Most of the signs have been shot up or run over. ...of an hour to be her lover. She's a mighty river waiting...