For four to six months, life on the Oregon Trail was one long working day, repeated. Almost everyone walked, including women and children, because riding in a wagon was rough and dusty and tired the oxen. Only a small share of travelers kept a diary, but those diaries are the best record we have of the work, the food, the weather and the losses along the way.
Before a tent near the river a violin makes lively music, and some youths and maidens have improvised a dance upon the green.
01A day on the trail
In Jesse Applegate's company of 1843, the night guards fired their rifles at four in the morning to wake the camp. By seven the oxen were yoked, breakfast was eaten and the tents were struck, and a trumpet sent the wagons rolling. The train stopped for a midday rest, set off again at one, and formed its circle for the night as the sun got low. On most travel days a company covered 12 to 15 miles, and on a very good day 20.
02Food
Flour, bacon, beans, rice, dried fruit, coffee and sugar made up most meals, with bread or biscuits baked in a Dutch oven. Hunters added bison, antelope and sage hens when they could, and families with a cow had milk. Fresh vegetables were rare. When Peter Burnett's company bought potatoes from Native families near the Blue Mountains in 1843, he wrote that he had never tasted a greater luxury.
Joel Palmer’s 1847 guide told each adult to pack 200 pounds of flour and 75 pounds of bacon, along with coffee, tea, sugar, rice, dried beans and dried fruit. The full list is on the gear and supplies page.
03Shelter
At night families slept in tents or squeezed into their wagons on top of the load. Lansford Hastings advised plain bedding: blankets and coverlets laid over a buffalo robe or an oiled cloth. Each evening the wagons were drawn into a circle, each chained to the one in front, making a pen for yoking the oxen in the morning and a barrier in case of attack.
04Children's work
Children gathered buffalo chips, carried water, drove the loose cattle and looked after younger brothers and sisters, and many walked much of the way. Joel Palmer told every family to 'lay in a good supply of school books for their children.' The road was dangerous for them too: climbing on or off a moving wagon was a common cause of injury and death.
05Women's work
In family trains women did most of the cooking, washing, mending and child care, and nursed the sick, all while keeping up with the wagons. Some also drove the teams and loaded and unloaded the wagons. Babies were born on the road. Naomi Sager gave birth soon after her family set out in 1844, and Jesse Applegate described Dr. Marcus Whitman helping a mother through childbirth beside the trail in 1843.
06Sundays
Many companies stayed in camp on Sundays for worship, washing, repairs and a day of grazing for the oxen. Others kept moving to stay ahead of the mountain snows. Guidebook writers disagreed about long stops: Joel Palmer warned that resting two nights in the same place let the cattle wander too far.
07Music & evenings
After supper, if the day had gone well, someone might bring out a fiddle or a flute. Jesse Applegate described one good night in 1843, with a violin playing while young people danced on the grass, and a flute somewhere else in the camp. Then the guard was set, and the watches changed through the night until four in the morning.
08Diaries
Many emigrants kept diaries or wrote about the journey later, and hundreds of these accounts survive. They record the weather, the miles, the graves, the prices at the forts and the small kindnesses between strangers on the same hard road. Many have been published, and some can be read free online.