Travel, Trial Sizes

The Oregon Trail was one of the key overland migration routes on which pioneers traveled across the North American continent in wagons in order to settle new parts of the United States of America during the 19th century. more...

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Travel, Trial Sizes

The Oregon Trail helped the United States implement its cultural goal of Manifest Destiny, that is, to build a great nation spanning the North American continent. The Oregon Trail spanned over half the continent as the wagon trail proceeded 2,170 miles (3,500 kilometers) west through territories and land later to become six U.S. states (Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon). 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. Once the first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, the use of this trail by long distance travelers diminished as the railroad slowly replaced it.

History

Astorians

The first land route across the continent 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. However, the pass through the Rocky Mountains they took, Lolo Pass, turned out to be too difficult for wagons to pass. In 1810, John Jacob Astor outfitted an expedition (known popularly as the Astor Expedition or Astorians) to find an overland supply route for establishing a fur trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River at Fort Astoria.

Fearing attacks by the Blackfeet, the expedition veered south of the Lewis and Clark route in South Dakota and in the process passed through Wyoming and then down the Snake River to the Columbia River.

Members of the party, including Robert Stuart, returned back east after the British took over the outpost in the War of 1812 via the Snake River. The party stumbled upon South Pass: a wide, low pass through the Rockies in Wyoming. The party continued via the Platte River. This turned out to be a practical wagon route, and Stuart's journals were a meticulous account of it.

Fort Astoria was returned to United States control at the end of the war. However, the British Hudson Bay Company continued to control the fur trade there.

Great American Desert

Westward expansion did not begin immediately, however. Reports from expeditions in 1806 by Lieutenant Zebulon Pike and in 1819 by Major Stephen Long described the Great Plains as "unfit for human habitation" and "The Great American Desert". These descriptions were mainly based on the relative lack of timber and surface water. The images of sandy wastelands conjured up by terms like "desert" were tempered by the many reports of vast herds of bison. Nonetheless, until the Ogallala Aquifer was discovered and used for irrigation and railroads allowed farm products to be transported to distant markets and lumber imported, the Great Plains remained unattractive for general settlement, especially when compared to the fertile lands, big rivers, and seaports of Oregon.

Read more at Wikipedia.org