Did anybody have a good time on the Oregon Trail? Neal Hathaway Durango, Colorado Interesting question. Many did. Those pioneers were amazingly...
Paladin, Gamblers and the Oregon Trail
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Oregon Trail
The Oregon Trail: Part 3
As traffic on the Oregon Trail increased, a bustling industry of frontier trading posts sprang up to supply food and equipment for the five-month...
The Oregon Trail: Part 2
Most wagons were about six feet wide and twelve feet long. They were usually made of seasoned hardwood and covered with a large, oiled canvas...
The Oregon Trail: Part 1
Though some American settlers had traveled to Oregon and California in the 1830s, West-bound wagon trains really started heading out in great...
What They Read in the Old West
Francis Parkman was an essayist historian, writing about the Oregon Trail. He also lived with the Sioux Indians for six months and wrote about their...
Knight of the Rockies
Jim Bridger, once a teenaged mountain man, became the most dependable and renowned trailblazer of the vast lands of the American West. For more than...
Ewing Young
When the free trappers banded together for self-preservation, they usually elected a partisan or captain to act as leader. He was usually a man with...
Nancy Kelsey: The First Woman to Cross the Sierra 1841
The year was 1841 and the Kelsey clan, often on the move, once again had itching feet. A letter from a Dr. Marsh (Dr. John Marsh) in California...
Trail Drives: Code of the Trail
Was there an understanding among trail drive bosses that no two drives left at the same time? Did trail drives ever intersect and cause a problem as...
Tragedy on the Oregon-California Trail
For the most part, the women did not want to leave friends, travel some 2,000 miles home and make that trek of several months. Most of it was...
A Woman’s Perspective of Life on the Oregon Trail
For the most part, the women did not want to leave home. They only went because their husbands or fathers insisted. And on the journey, they cooked...
Oregon Trail: Independence, Missouri, to Scotts Bluff, Nebraska
Hopeful faces turned westward more than 150 years ago as the greatest pioneer movement in history began along the Oregon Trail. Although the people...