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Oregon National Historic Trail, 1843-1883

Significance | Historical Context | Bibliography

Significance
The Oregon Trail is the predominant symbol of American westward expansion in the Nineteenth Century, a period of Manifest Destiny when the nation realized its dream of stretching from ocean to ocean. It demonstrated the feasibility of large-scale movement by wagon across great distances and over the Rocky Mountains, once perceived as an impassable barrier. The Oregon Trail was at the core of the largest and longest mass migration in United States history to that time and provided the means for strengthening American claims on the Pacific Northwest. Of the various western trails used by fur traders, missionaries, gold seekers and emigrants, the Oregon Trail became the most famous.

Historical context
Beginning in 1843, and for forty years thereafter, hundreds of thousands of Americans sold their Midwestern farms and homes and walked nearly 2,000 miles along the Oregon Trail -- across open prairies and rugged mountain ranges toward the ideal called the West. The "Oregon Road" was, like our interstate highways, a main artery to the West. Many emigrants settled in today's Oregon; many more traveled west along the Oregon Trail to trail junctions that led them to Utah and, especially after gold discoveries in 1848, to California (among those routes was the Applegate Trail).

The reasons for migrating were as varied as the persons who traveled the Trail. To some emigrants, the idea of "Oregon" meant personal or religious freedom; to others, it was patriotic action against the British (who were vying for control of the Oregon's natural resources); to others, in meant free land; and still to others, a life away from the disease-ridden swamps of the Mississippi River valleys.

The land the emigrant trail crossed was home to Native Americans -- the Sioux, the Pawnee, the Shoshone, the Nez Perce, the Cayuse, the Walla Walla, and the Umatilla. For decades, wagon trains crossed the land. The wagons' rumble and dust clouds persisted during the summer months. During the winter, the emigrant flow stilled, beginning again as soon as the grasses greened and the ice moved off the creeks and rivers. Native Americans traded with the emigrants, and often guided them along the way. Without the help of those who were here first, many emigrants would have perished in the effort. Emigrants settling in the West affected native groups irreversibly, setting off the chain of events that led to the reservation system and Indian Wars of the 1850s and 1870s.

The Oregon Trail stretches 547 miles across Oregon. It was the final leg of a long and tiresome journey for those who crossed to the Oregon Country on the overland trails. Emigrants entered this portion of the Oregon Trail, and today's state of Oregon, at the Snake River Crossing near Nyssa. They crossed the sagebrush steppe, the Blue Mountains, the desolate Columbia Plateau, and maneuvered wagons and oxen down the Columbia River or across the Barlow Road before reaching the Willamette Valley and the end of the Oregon Trail.

For many of the emigrants, the effort was worth the reward. Laying before them, as they crossed the Cascades' summit, was the Willamette Valley -- a land of crisp, clean air, sweet water, towering fir, and dark, rich soil. They found home.

Bibliography
Scholarly documents
DeVoto, Bernard. The Year of Decision: 1846. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1943.

Evans, John W. Powerful Rocky: the Blue Mountains and the Oregon Trail, 1811-1883. LaGrande, OR: Eastern Oregon State College, 1991.

Franzwa, Gregory. Maps of the Oregon Trail. St. Louis: The Patrice Press, 1980.

Haines, Aubrey L. Historic Sites Along the Oregon Trail. St. Louis: The Patrice Press, 1981.

Lavender, David. Westward Vision: The Story of the Oregon Trail. Lincoln and London, University of Nebraska Bison Books, 1963.

Mattes, Merril. The Great Platte River Road. Lincoln and London, University of Nebraska Bison Books, 1969.

Palmer, Joel. Journal of Travels on the Oregon Trail in 1845. Portland, OR: Oregon Historical Society Press, 1993.

Rumer, Thomas A. The Wagon Trains of '44: A Comparative View of the Individual Caravans in the Emigration of 1844 to Oregon. Spokane, WA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1990.

Unruh, John D. The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-1860. Urbana, Chicago, London: University of Illinois Press, 1979.

Government and management documents
Oregon and Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trails: Management and Use Plan Update. USDI National Park Service, 1998.

Oregon National Historic Trail Comprehensive Management and Land Use Plan. USDI National Park Service, August 1981.

Oregon National Historic Trail Comprehensive Management and Land Use Plan, Appendix II, Primary Route. USDI National Park Service, August 1981.

Oregon National Historic Trail Comprehensive Management and Land Use Plan, Appendix III, Selected Historic Sites and Cross-Country Segments. USDI National Park Service, August 1981.

Oregon National Historic Trail High Potential Sites and Segments Inventory: A list of recommendations for Oregon and Washington. Prepared by Jim Renner, Oregon Trails Coordinating Council for the USDI National Park Service, 1997.

Our Oregon Trail: A Report to the Governor. Oregon Trail Advisory Council, 1988.