01Overview
Most of the Oregon Trail was worn into the ground by wagon wheels, along paths that Native peoples, fur traders and missionaries had used before. Emigrants cut new stretches only where they had to, such as through the forests of the Blue Mountains. As a road for emigrant families it was busy for less than thirty years, from the first wagon party in 1841 to the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869.
02Prelude · 1803-1840
In 1803 the Louisiana Purchase nearly doubled the size of the United States and stretched it west to the Rocky Mountains. Beyond the mountains lay the Oregon Country, which both the United States and Britain claimed.
The American claim rested partly on Robert Gray, a sea captain who sailed into the Columbia River in 1792, and on Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery, which reached the mouth of the Columbia in 1805. From 1818 the two countries agreed to share the Oregon Country. Meanwhile fur traders and trappers found the rivers and passes that later became the emigrant road.
we are in view of the opening of the Ocian, which Creates great joy.
03The emigration era · 1841-1860
The first party of emigrants with wagons left Missouri in 1841. Two years later the Great Migration of 1843 brought an estimated 700 to 1,000 settlers in a single season. As Americans poured into the Oregon Country, the question of who owned it grew urgent, and some politicians demanded all of it, as far north as latitude 54°40′.
The Oregon Treaty of 1846 settled the border with Britain at the 49th parallel instead. From 1849 the California Gold Rush pulled most westbound travelers toward California, but emigrants kept coming to Oregon for another twenty years.
Many Americans believed their country was meant to spread across the whole continent. In 1845 the New York editor John L. O’Sullivan called this idea “manifest destiny.” It was used to justify taking land from Native nations and from Mexico.
The trail was always a bundle of routes rather than one road. New shortcuts and roads, such as the Sublette Cutoff (1844), the Barlow Road (1846), the Applegate Trail (1846) and the Lander Road (1858), gave later travelers other choices.
04The Great Migration of 1843
The year 1843 turned the trail from an experiment into a migration. An estimated 700 to 1,000 emigrants, the biggest party yet, left the Independence area in May. They hired John Gantt, a former army captain and fur trader, to guide them as far as Fort Hall. Marcus Whitman, heading home after a hard winter journey east to save his mission, joined them on the way.
At Fort Hall, Hudson’s Bay Company men told the emigrants to leave their wagons behind. Whitman urged them on, and they cut a wagon road through the forests of the Blue Mountains. They reached the Willamette Valley in the fall, showing that families with wagons could make the trip.
The traffic kept growing. The busiest year was 1852, when about 70,000 people set out on the western trails, according to the historian John Unruh, most of them bound for the California gold fields. Between 1841 and the late 1860s, about 400,000 people used the Oregon, California and Mormon trails. Only about 80,000 of them settled in Oregon. Most went on to California or Utah.
...by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us...
05Hardships on the road
The trip was hard work every day. Travelers faced river crossings where people and animals drowned, fierce spring storms on the plains, choking dust, broken wagons and steep mountain grades. Sudden thunderstorms on the plains brought hail, high wind and lightning, and lightning killed some travelers and their cattle. Many had packed too much and had to lighten their wagons along the way.
Popular stories remember attacks by Native warriors, but most meetings between emigrants and Native people were peaceful, and many involved trade. Disease was far deadlier, above all cholera, which spread through dirty water at crowded campsites and could kill a person in a day. Historians estimate that about 3 to 10 percent of travelers died on the way, most of them from disease.
06Settlement and legacy
The settlers who finished the trail helped shape the Pacific Northwest. Most made their homes in the valleys west of the Cascade Mountains, above all the Willamette Valley. Oregon City, at the end of the trail, became the first capital of Oregon Territory in 1848, and Oregon became a state in 1859. For the Native nations of the region, the same years brought war, treaties that took most of their land, and life on reservations.
In 1978 Congress made the route the Oregon National Historic Trail, one of the first four national historic trails. Today the National Park Service, state historical societies and local museums help people find and follow it.
07Decline · 1860-1869
From 1855 a railroad across Panama gave travelers a faster way west by sea, and traffic on the trail began to drop. In 1860 and 1861 Pony Express riders carried the mail from Missouri to California in about ten days, riding the trail’s eastern half, until the first transcontinental telegraph, finished in October 1861, put them out of business. Then the first transcontinental railroad, completed in 1869, ended the era of the great wagon trains, though some families kept going west by wagon for years afterward.
08Things you may not know
It was not one single path
Where the land allowed, wagons spread out side by side to find grass and water and to escape each other's dust. In places the trail spread out over miles of ground. Over the years, new cutoffs and toll roads gave travelers other routes.
Nobody knew if wagons could make it
For years many people doubted that wagons could cross the mountains to Oregon. The Whitmans' wagon of 1836 got only as far as Fort Boise, cut down to a cart. In 1840 Robert Newell and Joseph Meek drove wagons to Fort Walla Walla, and in 1843 the Great Migration took more than 100 wagons to the Columbia River.
Prairie schooners, not Conestogas
The big Conestoga wagon was a freight hauler from the East, too heavy for most emigrant families. Emigrants used smaller, lighter farm wagons with cloth covers, nicknamed prairie schooners.
Attacks were rare
Attacks on wagon trains did happen, but far less often than old Western movies suggest. Most meetings between emigrants and Native people were peaceful, and many involved trade.
Names carved in stone
Emigrants carved or painted their names on landmarks such as Independence Rock and Register Cliff. Many of those names can still be read today.
Most did not end up in Oregon
Of the roughly 400,000 people who used the western trails, only about 80,000 settled in Oregon. Most went to California or Utah.
An old pioneer marked the route
Ezra Meeker went west on the trail in 1852. In 1906, in his seventies, he drove an ox team back east along the route, putting up markers and asking the nation to remember it. He later crossed the country again by car and by airplane.
They left a lot behind
Many families packed more than their oxen could pull and threw out furniture and other heavy things along the way. In 1849 so much was left near Fort Laramie that some gold-rush travelers called the place Camp Sacrifice.
09Timeline
- 1803Prelude
Louisiana Purchase
The United States buys the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million. The purchase of about 828,000 square miles nearly doubles the size of the country and includes the land the trail will later cross from Missouri to the Rocky Mountains.
- 1804-06Exploration
Lewis & Clark Expedition
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark lead the Corps of Discovery up the Missouri River, over the Rocky Mountains and down the Columbia to the Pacific, the first American expedition to cross the continent. Their route over the Bitterroot Mountains is far too rough for wagons, but their journals and maps give Americans their first detailed look at the Northwest.
- 1811Fur trade
Astorians reach the Columbia
John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company founds Fort Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River. An overland party led by Wilson Price Hunt struggles west along the Snake River, a route later emigrants would partly follow, and reaches Astoria early in 1812.
- 1812Discovery
Robert Stuart finds South Pass
Heading east from Astoria, Robert Stuart's small party hears from a Shoshone man about a shorter way over the mountains. On October 22 they cross South Pass, a wide, gentle saddle at 7,412 feet that Native peoples had used for centuries. It will become the key to taking wagons over the Rockies.
- 1825Fur trade
First Rocky Mountain rendezvous
William Ashley holds the first rendezvous on Henrys Fork of the Green River, a summer trade fair where trappers and Native people traded furs for supplies hauled from St. Louis. The fairs are held every summer until 1840, and the supply trains help wear the route over South Pass that the emigrant trails will later follow.
- 1830First wagons
Wagons reach the Rocky Mountains
William Sublette, of the fur firm Smith, Jackson & Sublette, takes ten wagons and two Dearborn carriages from St. Louis up the Platte River to the rendezvous on the Wind River. They are the first wagons to reach the Rocky Mountains, though they stop short of the Continental Divide.
- 1832First wagons
Wagons cross South Pass
Army captain Benjamin Bonneville leads a fur-trading expedition of 20 wagons over South Pass in July, the first wagons known to cross the Continental Divide there.
- 1834Forts
Forts Laramie, Hall and Boise founded
Fur traders build three posts that will later serve emigrants: Fort William, the first Fort Laramie, near the North Platte, Nathaniel Wyeth's Fort Hall on the Snake River, and Fort Boise downriver, built for the Hudson's Bay Company to compete with Fort Hall. Wyeth sells Fort Hall to the company in 1837.
- 1836Missionaries
Whitman & Spalding parties cross
Missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and Henry and Eliza Spalding travel west to start missions among the Cayuse and Nez Perce. Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding become the first white women known to cross the Rocky Mountains, and Marcus Whitman gets a wagon as far as Fort Boise by cutting it down to a two-wheeled cart.
- 1840First wagons
First wagons reach the Columbia
Former fur trappers Robert Newell and Joseph Meek bring the first wagons from Fort Hall to the Columbia River country, reaching the Whitman Mission near Fort Walla Walla. They make it only by lightening the loads and throwing away the wagon boxes.
- 1841First emigrants
Bartleson-Bidwell Party
More than sixty emigrants set out from Missouri in the first emigrant wagon train bound for the Pacific. At Soda Springs about half turn off for California, while the rest go on to Oregon.
- 1843Great Migration
The Great Migration
An estimated 700 to 1,000 emigrants leave Missouri in May, guided as far as Fort Hall by John Gantt, with Marcus Whitman along. They cut a road through the Blue Mountains, and most bring their wagons all the way to The Dalles, proving that families can take wagons to Oregon. Jesse Applegate's 'A Day with the Cow Column in 1843' later becomes one of the most reprinted accounts of the trail.
- 1846Treaty
Oregon Treaty signed
Britain and the United States divide the Oregon Country along the 49th parallel, and the land south of the line, including today's Oregon, Washington and Idaho, becomes American. The Hudson's Bay Company later moves its western headquarters north to Vancouver Island. The same year Sam Barlow opens his toll road around Mount Hood, completing a route to the Willamette Valley by land.
- 1846-47Disaster
Donner Party tragedy
A California-bound company takes the Hastings Cutoff, Lansford Hastings's new route south of the Great Salt Lake, which probably costs it a month, and is trapped by snow in the Sierra Nevada near what is now Donner Lake. Of the 87 people in the company, 48 survive the winter, some only by eating the bodies of those who had died.
- 1847Mormon migration
Brigham Young leads the Mormons west
Forced out of Nauvoo, Illinois, the Latter-day Saints head west. Brigham Young's advance company follows the north bank of the Platte to Fort Laramie, then the Oregon Trail over South Pass to Fort Bridger, and reaches the Salt Lake Valley in July. More than 2,000 arrive by the end of the year, and the ferries they run on the North Platte and Green rivers also carry other emigrants for a fee.
- 1847Tragedy
Whitman Mission attack
After a measles epidemic kills many Cayuse while most white patients recover, a group of Cayuse men attack the Whitman Mission at Waiilatpu on November 29. That day and in the days that follow, they kill Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and 11 others. The Cayuse War follows, and the news helps push Congress to create Oregon Territory the next year.
- 1848Gold
Gold discovered at Sutter's Mill
On January 24 James Marshall finds gold at John Sutter's sawmill on the American River in California. When President James Polk confirms the find in December, it sets off the Gold Rush of 1849.
- 1848Territory
Oregon Territory created
On August 14 Congress creates the Territory of Oregon, with Oregon City as its capital. It takes the place of the provisional government that settlers had formed in 1843.
- 1849Cholera
The Gold Rush crowds the trail
About 25,000 people go overland to California, while only a few hundred head for Oregon. Cholera spreads through the crowded camps and kills many travelers, most of them east of Fort Laramie. Many are buried in unmarked graves beside the road.
- 1850Land grants
Donation Land Claim Act
Congress offers free land in Oregon: 320 acres to a white male settler who arrives by December 1, 1850, and 320 more to his wife, if they live on and farm it for four years. Later arrivals get half as much, until the offer ends in 1855. The law shuts out Black and Hawaiian settlers and takes land from the Native peoples who live there.
- 1851Treaty
Fort Laramie Treaty
At Horse Creek, near Fort Laramie, the United States and eight Plains nations (the Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Assiniboine, Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara) sign a treaty that marks out each nation's lands and lets the United States build roads and forts, in exchange for yearly payments. The Senate cuts the payments from fifty years to ten, and within a few years the peace breaks down.
- 1852Peak
Peak emigration year
About 70,000 people head west on the Oregon, California and Mormon trails, the most in any single year by historian John Unruh's count. Cholera is deadly again, spreading through the crowded camps along the Platte River.
- 1855-58Conflict
Wars across the Northwest
War breaks out in the new Oregon and Washington territories, including the Yakima War, the Rogue River War and the Puget Sound War, as miners and settlers push onto Native land faster than the new treaties are carried out. The fighting ends with many Native peoples of the region forced onto reservations.
- 1859Statehood
Oregon admitted to the Union
On February 14, 1859, Oregon becomes the 33rd state. The news does not reach Oregon until March 15, more than a month later. The 1860 census counts about 52,000 people in the new state.
- 1860-61Communication
Pony Express and the telegraph
Pony Express riders carry mail from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, in about ten days, following the emigrant road for much of the way. The first transcontinental telegraph, finished in October 1861, puts the Pony Express out of business after just 18 months.
- 1862Land
Homestead Act
Anyone 21 or older, or the head of a family, who is a citizen or has filed to become one can claim 160 acres of federal land by living on it and farming it for five years. Over the years settlers claim about 270 million acres, a tenth of the United States, and free land is now on offer across the West, not only in Oregon.
- 1869End of an era
Transcontinental Railroad completed
The rails meet at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory, on May 10. A journey across the country that took months now takes about a week. Wagon travel on the old trails fades, though some families still go west by wagon for years afterward.
- 1906-08Preservation
Ezra Meeker's monument trip
At 75, Ezra Meeker, who had come west on the trail in 1852, sets out with an ox-drawn wagon to retrace it eastward, dedicating markers and asking towns along the way to put up more. He reaches Washington, D.C., in 1907 and meets President Theodore Roosevelt. He makes another trip from 1910 to 1912, and many of his markers still stand.
- 1978Preservation
Designated a National Historic Trail
Congress makes the route the Oregon National Historic Trail, administered by the National Park Service. Places such as the wagon ruts near Guernsey, Wyoming, and the names carved on Register Cliff and Independence Rock can still be visited.