Oregon Trail

The Oregon Trail

Fun Facts

Over a period of about thirty years, roughly 1830 to 1860, some 300,000 Americans crowded these overland trails.The Oregon Trail totaled some 2,000 miles.It took six to seven months to travel the complete length of the Oregon Trail.Only some 5,000 or so had made it to Oregon Territory by 1845, with another 3,000 making their way to California three years later. This trickle would turn into a flood in the following decade.The trail followed first the Missouri and then the Platte River.

Diary

Thus organized, we moved forward the same morning after dismissing our Indian thieves, through rain and mud and every ill convience that man could experience, there being no road and the mud being so deep it was necessary to keep on the highest ground so that wo could go at all; so by keeping on the dividing ridges between the streams we were enabled to reach the trail made by the emigration of 1843, the year before. Here we camped for the night, and the next morning early the companies were called together for counsel in reference to sending a dispatch back to Col. N. Ford, who was coming by this road, he having sent a dispatch while we were encamped on the Missouri river at Caple's ferry, requesting us to communicate with him when we reached Burnett's Trail.

- Diseases- Supplies ran out- Lack of food- People drowned trying to swim across the river- Horses grew tired

Problems on the journy