Wagons Ho!

I watched a lot of Ward Bond and Wagon Train on TV when I was a kid. One of my favorite shows. Bond played a surly but paternal wagon train captain who always made things turn out well by the end of the hour. Not so in real life, I learned. Settlers, referred to as emigrants, sought to escape high unemployment, a stock market crash, and constant infectious epidemics in eastern cities in the first half of the 19^th Century. The dream of free land in a country touted to be sunny, warm and fertile-- Oregon-- drew thousands along the old Indian traces that had been the routes of fur trappers and missionaries in the early 1800’s. So many died along the way that by the 1860’s there was a grave every 80 feet along the trail.

I began to follow its course in reverse, hoping it would be less dangerous. The sign was ominous, however.

When emigrants crossed this high pass in eastern Oregon at Flagstaff Hill, they were met by a broad desert valley with a huge singular tree that had served as a guide for hundreds of years. A sequoia, it was chopped down by an emigrant in 1846. No wonder Native Americans stopped offering a welcome hand to the white-man's wagon trains.

 

 

Mt. Hood near the Columbia River Gorge between Oregon and Washington State. Before the Barlow toll "road" was cut around the mountain, emigrants had to float their wagons over the treacherous Columbia River cascades below this point.

The arrival of trans-continental rail ended the wagon train era

 Baker City, Oregon eventually developed along the Oregon Trail, helped considerably by the discovery of gold in the 1860's.  The renovated Geiser Grand Hotel is the town's jewel and has been called the best historic hotel in the west. I stayed at the Oregon Trail Motel which offered a heated pool, free breakfast at the diner next door, and 47 cable channels...but no PBS...and therefore no Sunday night Masterpiece Theater.

Essential services thrive in rural America

In early 1841 the first emigrant wagon train set out from Independence, Missouri. The settlers walked along side—for 6 months and over 2,000 miles--  from the 1840's until the rail road came through in 1869. Riding a motorcycle through this landscape and seeing its dry, harsh environment, I was left in awe of the early white settlers’ courage and tenacity. 

Early trail conveyances

No one modern highway follows the trail exactly but there are quite a few places where one can still see the ruts left by the wagons. The National Park Service and several states have placed historical markers and interpretive displays along the various roads that now run near the original route. When I stood at some of the sites, the sense of history was palpable.

More recent trail-side relics

There is NO RUST in eastern Oregon