The Oregon Trail was a 2,170-mile wagon road from Missouri to Oregon. Between 1841 and 1869, thousands of families walked it beside their wagons, hoping for new farms in the West.
Read their story here, follow the route on a map, and play the classic Oregon Trail game, MECC's 1992 Deluxe edition, right in your browser.
Led the first wagons up the Platte River road to the Rocky Mountains in 1830 and founded the trading post that became Fort Laramie.
Between 1841 and 1869, about 400,000 people headed west on the Oregon, California and Mormon trails. They set out from towns along the Missouri River, such as Independence, St. Joseph and Council Bluffs.
About 80,000 of them went to Oregon. Most of the others went to California, many hoping to find gold, or to the Mormon settlements in Utah.
Read about the pioneers, their hard days on the road, and the landmarks they passed.
Pick a job, buy your supplies, and lead a wagon party west.
The version here is The Oregon Trail Deluxe, MECC's 1992 edition for MS-DOS computers. It runs right in your browser, with nothing to install and no account needed.
It works best on a computer with a mouse and a keyboard.
Every version of the Oregon Trail game, plus MECC's Yukon, Amazon and Africa Trail spinoffs. Open one to read its story, and to play it if it runs in your browser.
The 1990 MS-DOS Oregon Trail: the 1985 classic, played from the keyboard.
MECC's 1992 MS-DOS classic, with mouse controls and eight occupations.
The 1993 Windows version on CD, with voices, a wagon weight limit and night stops.
Travel up the Amazon, and back in time, to help the Inca.
2,170 miles, from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City, Oregon
Mostly 1841 to 1869, with the busiest years in the early 1850s
About 400,000 people on the Oregon, California and Mormon trails combined
Estimates run from about 1 in 30 to 1 in 10 travelers, most of them killed by disease, especially cholera
Farm wagons with cloth covers, smaller than the big Conestoga freight wagons
1869, when the first transcontinental railroad was finished
The Oregon National Historic Trail, created by Congress in 1978
Independence Rock in Wyoming, nicknamed the Register of the Desert for the names travelers carved on it
Pick a topic to start reading. Many of the articles quote the diaries and letters of people who made the trip themselves.
The best place to start: a 12-minute introduction to where the trail came from, where it went, what daily life was like, and what the trail changed.
How fur traders' paths became a road for thousands of families, from the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 to the first transcontinental railroad in 1869.
Follow the route mile by mile. Click a stop on the map to read about it and see how far along the trail it was.
What a day on the trail looked like: work, food, shelter, children, Sundays, and the diaries that survived the journey.
Disease, drowning, accidents and bad weather. What made the trail dangerous, and which popular stories get it wrong.
The roles inside a wagon train, and the families behind them: captain, scout, blacksmith, doctor, hunter, cook.
The names that come up again and again: Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, Jim Bridger, Chief Washakie, Ezra Meeker and others, each with a life story.
Forts, rivers and landmarks from Independence to Oregon City, with what happened there and what you can still see today.
Wagon, oxen, flour, bacon, rifles and a Dutch oven. What a family packed for a trip that took four to six months.
The Pawnee, Lakota, Cheyenne, Shoshone, Cayuse, Nez Perce and other nations whose homelands the trail crossed, and where they live today.
Bull-whackers, prairie schooners, jumping-off points. The trail had its own words, and you can look them all up here, from A to Z.
Pick a quiz about the trail's history or about the Oregon Trail games, then choose 5, 10, 15 or 20 questions. Some are multiple choice, and some ask you to put things in the right order.
The Oregon Trail Deluxe, MECC's 1992 classic, runs right here in your browser. Buy your supplies, cross the rivers, and see if your wagon party can make it to Oregon.