The Oregon Trail A virtual tour along the landscape.
Transcript of The Oregon Trail A virtual tour along the landscape.
The Oregon Trail
• Pioneers: a.k.a. – Overlanders, parties, companies or teams (some groups: 1000)
• Traveled 2000 miles during summer months (April-Nov.) in 1830’s and ’40’s
• Young – adult males traveling w/ families
• Canvas Covered Wagons: clothes they wore, blankets, guns, ammo, knives, water canteen, blackened pot, sugar, salt, flour
• Many started in Missouri then…
The Great Plains
• Several hundred miles of wide, rolling prairies (“Carpet of fresh green grass”)
• Native Amer. Territory • Buffalo• Violent Storms – Challenges?
– Cooking was tough– Getting stuck in mud– Crossing streams– Soaked clothing and bedding
The Platte River• Relatively easy portion of journey – sluggish, shallow,
½ mile wide• Friendly interaction with Natives until 1954• River crossings were difficult: Drownings, Quicksand• Dry, Dusty, Shadeless – Challenges?
– Lips cracking, dry nostrils, sickness: Cholera
– New animals, deceptive distances
– Monotony: tensions, tempers, weariness, boredom = Fractures
– Unpacking possessions to cross the river
Fort Laramie – Cut supplies
Independence Rock – “register of the desert”
Approaching the Foothills of the Rockies
• Sweetwater River – O. Trail became more rugged (2-3 miles per hour)
• Challenges?– Trees cut, boulders pried/pushed aside– Detours around deep gulches– Wagons tipped– Creek crossings: unload, disassemble and load
Largest Mtn. Range in U.S. – snow capped peaks 3,000 ft. high – Passable?
Rocky Mountains – South Pass
• Dry, Rocky terrain of wild sagebrush, precipitous hillsides and prickly pear but gradual assent – Challenges?– Wagon unloading, ropes, pulleys, worn animal
hooves
Also…Unpredictable weather in high passes (snowstorms) – Challenges
– Slow travel, no grazing or hunting
The Great Basin
• Northern most part, not a great descent (plains) but…
• One of driest parts of journey – Challenges?– Water unattainable, impassable gorges
Try Snake river but…– Difficult: deep, swift, submerged boulders
• Many rafts capsized
Blue Mountains
• Very steep but comforting…Last range, near destination and crossed them before
• Challenges:– Similar to other mountains: ropes, pulleys, etc.– Health concerns: Very taxed at this point –
susceptible to dysentery and exposed to cholera, measles and Mountain fever:
• Sores on unwashed bodiesAlso, Heat exhaustion, children falling off wagons
Columbia River
• Dalles settlement on south bank• VERY swift river, rapids – Challenges?
– Stood still for days– Fall in – many settlers died hereBarlow Road over Cascade mountains – Eastern
slope – Not bad; Western slope: swampy and heavily forested
• Used lines to slow wagons down slope