Talk:Oregon Trail

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[edit] Removed link

Removed http://www.pbs.org/opb/oregontrail/teacher/trailmap.html -- PBS lists the page as having been retired --Carnildo 07:41, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)

About my changes: all but one detail I pulled from published histories I have about the Oregon Trail. The exception is the late of the last wagon train, which is based on family tradition: my (great-) Aunt Margaret came as a child from Missouri to Vancouver, Washington by wagon train (she told this to my father). Best I can determine, this happened after the railroad connected Oregon & Washington to the rest of the country, some time in the 1880s or 1890s. I hope my fellow contributors will overlook this use of unprinted sources.

Travel by wagon & horse was far less expensive than by train, & the Oregon Trail probably was used well into the 20th century, when paved roads at last rendered it unnecessary. -- llywrch 20:11, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Quite likely that it was still used that late, and even later. I've seen paintings, photos, and reports of trains stopping for wagon trains, and vice versa. Further, US Highway 26 follows the trail for part of its length. --Carnildo 07:42, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

In "Dangers," I have always thought guns were the friend of the pioneer and Indians were the danger, but here apparently gun accidents are a greater danger than Indians. That sounds like a politicized slant, but I guess it would not be very difficult to locate sources to cite. I just cannot imagine that the Indians who were being genocided out of existence by the U.S. Army would be much help to pioneers, or maybe Dances With Wolves got it wrong.

  • Don't get your time periods confused. Wahkeenah 12:26, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
    • "Between 1841 and 1869, the Oregon Trail was used by settlers to the Northwest and West Coast areas of what is now the United States." Dunbar was transfered to Ft. Sedgewick before the close of the Civil War (1865), and the white squaw in Dances With Wolves was taken from her home after the Pawnee Indians killed her parents. The actress who portrayed her was older than she would have been, but she was at least 20 years old, which would place the slaughter of her parents sometime before 1850. The film also showed that the Indians killed the white buffalo hunters they caught. Which is wrong, the movie that won Hollywood's highest honor in 1990 or the Wikipedia article that says the Indians helped the pioneers? User:69.255.0.91 11:59, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
      • Well, which source do you trust more? Wahkeenah 13:11, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
      • Given the choice between a Hollywood drama and an unsourced Wikipedia article, I'll believe the article any day. Wikipedia doesn't have an economic incentive to dramatize things. --Carnildo 08:11, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

Thanks to the editor who did the cleanup. The article still needs sources and with all the additions and subtractions by various editors, I think the history section needs to have its facts checked. I'm not sure it's entirely chronological at this point, and has left out some key points. I'm not going to slap the {{cleanup}} tag back on this, but I thought I'd make a note here. I hope to get around to it, but I also hope someone beats me to it. The routes section could use a going-over too. Katr67 15:48, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

The article completely leaves out the Jedediah Smith/William Sublette/David Edward Jackson partnership that was instrumental in opening the trail. http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/grte/chap2.htm Katr67 05:27, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Donner Party

I don't understand all the references to the Donner Party. They were following a branch of the California Trail when they were trapped, not the Oregon Trail. –Shoaler (talk) 10:14, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I guess because they were on the California Trail, which was identical to the Oregon Trail into Wyoming, where the two split. Still, seems a bit of a tangent, or could at least be described better. I'll see what I can do if I ever find more than 2 minutes of time.Pfly 21:18, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Singularity

 Please help improve this article or section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (March 2007)

It seems unusual that there would be only one land route from the settled parts of the United States to the Western territories (where the Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails coincide). It would be interesting to explain alternate land routes, and to what extent they were used. Were more northerly or southerly routes avoided because of terrain, or potential attacks from locals? -- Beland 19:59, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Image:1845_trailmap.gif would also seem to indicate that availability of water transport to Independence from the East and South helped make that region a common starting point. -- Beland 20:21, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
There are two major factors that restricted the route:
  1. The only reliable water sources on the Great Plains are the rivers, and there aren't many of them.
  2. There are very few passes through the Rocky Mountains. Prior to the invention of modern earth-moving capabilities, only South Pass was really viable for wagons. Everything else was too steep, snowed-in too much of the year, or did not have reliable rivers on both sides of the pass.
--Carnildo 23:45, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lewis and Clark's route, practical?

The article currently contains this statement: "The first land route across what is now the United States that was well-mapped was that taken by Lewis and Clark from 1804 to 1805. They believed they had found a practical route to the west coast." ... did they really think they had found a practical route? I was under the impression they well knew it involved an arduous and difficult crossing of the Rocky Mountains -- certainly not practical in terms of watercraft portaging or wagons. Yes, they found a route, but I'm skeptical they called it "practical". So I'm adding a cn tag. Pfly (talk) 21:57, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Good call. Myself, speaking as a BCer with a jaundiced eye for hype (BC is built on it), the Lewis & Clar k story gets treated way too much like a hagiography of the story of Exodus, likewise the Oregon Trail; a mythology, a pededstal; even in "soft terminology" like you've zeroed in on, there's this subtext, like manifestdestiny, which makes it all seems pre-destined and rightful. The legacy of Lewis & Clark was the blackmailing of Britain, and ultimately the slaughter of Britain's former friends and customers in the region. Sorry, didn't mean to digress/rant. The British interest, please note, were to develop the first sort-of-practical route across the continent, which you and I know to be the Express...and it wasn't practical at all. Until the railways the only practical way to get to the Pacific Northwest was by ship, or (once Cali had rail) by train to SF and then by ship, or overland north by horse (a very tough go even if the inhabitants, or what reminded of them, weren't hostile). The Oregon Country in the mythology of the Trail, as seen in films and extolled in curricuulum materials, is like a national Eden or Canaan, the route chosen by the President of the Union's own emissaries, a saintly native woman making sure they got through, cuddly natives who were nice to them and bad, nasty ungrateful ones that were not but didn't really hurt anyone, etc ad nauseam, like a national comic book (well, the US has lots of those, e.g. iconic lore like Washington and the cherry tree, and crossing the Delaware; and California got the same treatyment (the final scenes of the Grapes of Wrath - paradise fulfilled, still a myth in the Pacific Northwest isn't it?). Iconic, yes, as it's like a religion...as is Canada's mythology about itself, and just as false. All the better passes (and the smaller deserts) were to teh North, in British territory; L&C chronicles put it about that they were avoiding the Blackfoot (kinda cowardly - but would they have tried a northern route if British power hadn't been there behind British claims; were they avoiding the Blackfoot, or were they on the Prez's orders not to cross the HBC? i.e. to stay south of the treatied latitude? I can't think of any similar Canadian exploration/frontier personality who gets treated with the piousness and obsession that Americans hold for L&C, and for the Trail; we just don't have heroes....not that "our" guys were any less heroic; even when we've tried (with Mackenzie and Fraser and Thompson) we just don't have the pizazz and the razzamatazz. The stories do, it's how they get bottled/repeated/treated. And we have our own foibles of language, like your "practical way" observation/edit here, and probllems with national history/myth. And while I might seem to be dumping on the geewhiz rah-rah around the Oregon Trail, there's some regret taht we don't have the same legend behind us, or that we more insist on demystifying our legends and "making them real to us", which means like the next guy in line at Wal-Marts; it's not us that's dull, though. I'ts our p.r./branding/national hypesters; what Fraser and Thompson went through with marginal provisionsand a small party vs the expedition...oh waitaminit this is the Oregon Trail page, sorry ;-) our only non-mechanized equivalent was the small Overlander Party, which I've still got to get researched/strated...and they barelly made it. From then (1860s) to the railway in 1885 nobody with any commnon sense tried to cross the country overland on foot or by horse (see above about San Fran...even our MPs went to Ottawa via the NPR or UPR...). Our Oregon Trail was the CPR, I guess.....and that is our dominant national myth (other than hockey)..
Heh heh.. well I generally agree with you on the overly mythologized thing wrt Lewis and Clark and the Oregon Trail, but note that the Oregon Trail did not follow the route of Lewis and Clark but rather made use of South Pass, which was a practical route for wagons, even if not exactly a stroll in the park. The Oregon Trail route via South Pass was better than anything north of the 49th parallel -- but Lewis and Clark did not find it. The credit for that goes to Robert Stuart and other members of the Pacific Fur Company. American myopia may enter again on this point -- the Pacific Fur Company was a US venture, so it was Americans who found South Pass and blazed the Oregon Trail, right? No -- Stuart and just about all the other PFC people had been with, and soon returned to, the North West Company -- ie, they were Canadians for the most part. But in any case, my problem is with Lewis and Clark's route, which was absurdly hard. I've driven over the Oregon Trail's South Pass and Lewis and Clarks's Lolo Pass -- the first barely seems worthy of the word "pass" it is so flat (granted I had the luxury of an automobile and paved roads), the second is impressively steep, winding, and long, even in a car. Pfly (talk) 07:46, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
On some page somewhere, maybe Astoria's, I recently changed "first permanent US settlement on the Pacific Coast as it's just untrue, the settlement if it was by anyone was by British-subject Scots and French-Canadians; it's like my similarly-toned edits of various Oregon articles which make it sound like there was noone here but "French fur-traders" with no mention of hte HBC/British presence, with e pretense that the country was "empty", which of course it wasn't (similar glosses are problematic on BC pages/mythologies), or the pretense that Americans had occupied up to 54-40 when in fact there was only one ex-Brit living north of the Columbia at the time of the provisional government etc....bubble-popping I guess, I'm just a big meanie. As for South Pass, that's I-84's route right? Been over that, both summer and winter; still boggles me how high the Great Red Desert is and also that it drains neither east nor west. The northern passes along I-90 . . . what a torture test, huh? And I thought BC's highway 3 was bad for passes and curves. And our passes like the Crowsnest and Yellowhead are really gaps in the mountains more than passes in the usual sense...Skookum1 (talk) 15:22, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Lolo Pass is U.S. Route 12. I-90 is probably an easier pass, though it is hard to tell -- of course the interstate highway is easier than a two lane road. Also, I realized my saying South Pass was better than anything northwards may not be quite right -- the Peace River route through the Rockies may be easier, except for being so far north. Pfly (talk) 16:02, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
The Peace, before its inundation, was tough country and that's why steamboats were used to get through it; the actual pass with the Fraser at Summit Lake, between Mackenzie and Prince George, is really flat. Sounds like you've never driven through the CRowsnst or Yellowhead; real sub tle, dspite the mountains being close on either side. Kicking Horse is pretty straightfoward too except for the canyon descent on its west side; other Cdn Rockies passes are kinda "open" but there were no useful egress on the west from most of them....Skookum1 (talk) 16:22, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Yellowhead Pass, oh yea, I have been through there and had forgotten how easy it was. I went over Crowsnest once, but so long ago I can barely remember what it was like. But anyway, yea I imagine Yellowhead would be easier than South Pass in terms of not being in the middle of a desolate near-waterless desert! Pfly (talk) 19:00, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Oh, and on the Grapes of Wrath thing -- FDR's Grand Coulee Dam and vision of turning the Washington desert into farms was, as I understand, a direct response to the plight of the Dust Bowl refugees -- not that many "Oakies" came to the Columbia Basin Project lands, most went to California. While the Dust Bowl / Grapes of Wrath has become fairly mythologized, there is some truth to it. I should know -- my father was a Grapes of Wrath type Dust Bowl Oakie whose family moved to California. Pfly (talk) 07:54, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Huh. The image I'm thinking of is from the film (never read the book), the oranges on the tree in the yard, the balmy sunshine of lushness of the "new paradise"; lots of other moveis like the The Oregon Trail (film) engage the same imagery, Eden at the end of the long journey across "the land God gave to Cain" etc. My Mom's family moved to SoCal in the 1920s, before the dustbowl; they were lucky, Grand-dad worked for the Red Line/street railway, I think as a conductor; so Mom and her sisters and brother had a system pass; they weren't rich but were already set up in California when all the trouble came down....my aunts had orange trees in their yards, one had an avocado tree (in Lakewood and Downey), and of course one of t hem had a swimming pool (in Englewood, now a no-go neighbourhood like where Grandma lived out her years in Huntington Park). Yes, it's true, I'm half-Californian, sort of, despite being a fire-breathing BCer....my Grandma's sister, though, hitchhiked from Nova Scotia to BC with her three boys in the '30s (one of those cousins became a brigadier general in the RCAF and was the Canadian charge d'affaires/commander of NORAD)...as for Okies, that particular Washington "twang" that's still around, it's sure noticeable when you hear it....a lot of Washingtonians sound like southerners to me...(other than that Warshintun thing) Skookum1 (talk) 15:22, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Actually I've never seen the film and was just thinking about the basic themes of the story. My dad has only a few obvious Oakie-isms now -- Warshington is one, another is that famous play by Shakespeare, May-zhure for May-zhure. :-) Pfly (talk) 16:02, 18 April 2008 (UTC)