Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail

OUR second day's cruise about the Sound took us past historic grounds. We went by old Fort Nisqually, one of the earliest posts of the Hudson's Bay Company on Puget Sound. Some...

WHEN we drove out of Eddyville, headed for the Oregon Country, our train consisted of but one wagon, two yoke of four-year old steers, and one yoke of cows. We also had one extr...

I WAS glad enough to get out of the crowds of New York. It had given me some rich experiences, but that big city is no place for ox teams. It was good to get away from the jam a...

THE ox is passing--in fact, has passed. The old-time spinning wheel and the hand loom, the quaint old cobbler's bench with its handmade lasts and shoe pegs, the heavy iron mush...

ON the first day of October, 1852, at about nine o'clock at night, with a bright moon shining, we reached Portland. Oliver met us; he had come ahead by the trail and had found a...

We were landed on the historic site of old Fort Boise, established by the Hudson's Bay Company in September, 1834. This fort was established for the purpose of preventing the su...

THE sight of Sweetwater River, twenty miles out from South Pass, revived many pleasant memories and some that were sad. I could remember the sparkling, clear water, the green sk...

AT last we were really settled and could begin the business for which we had come West; henceforth the quiet life of the farmer was to be ours, we thought. But again we had not...

It was an afternoon of the last week of June, in 1853, and the sun was yet high. I was well up the left bank of the Cowlitz River; how far I could not tell, for there were no mi...

AFTER passing the Missouri, and leaving the trail behind me, I somehow had a foreboding that I might be mistaken for a faker and looked upon as an adventurer, and I shrank from...

"OLD Oregon Trail Monument Expedition, Brady Island, Nebraska, August 9, 1906, Camp No. 120. Odometer, 1,536 5/8. Yesterday morning Twist ate his breakfast as usual and showed n...

In April of 1853, the word had begun to pass around that we were to have a new Territory to embrace the country north of the Columbia River. Its capital was to be on Puget Sound...

THE days that followed our venture in the gold field were more peaceful and prosperous. Soon after the Indian War we had moved to a new claim. We began now to realize to the ful...

My father's ancestors came from England in 1637. In 1665 they settled near Elizabeth City, New Jersey, building there a very substantial house which stood till almost 1910. More...

ON leaving my newly found friends I faced a discouraging prospect. The start for the high, arid table-lands bordering the Yakima valley cut me loose from all communication. No m...

AFTER leaving the Snake River we had one of the worst stretches of the trying journey. From the lower crossing of the Snake River at old Fort Boise to The Dalles is approximatel...

AS the column of wagons passed up the Platte in what is now western Nebraska, there was some relief from the dust. The throng was visibly thinned out; some had pushed on beyond...

WHEN we reached Indiana we settled down on a rented farm. Times were hard with us, and for a season all the members of the household were called upon to contribute their mite. I...

OUR youthful dream of becoming farmers was now realized in fullest measure. The clearing was gradually enlarged, and abundant crops came to reward our efforts. The comfort and p...

UP through the Natchess Pass Bobby and I took our lonely way, to reach and bring over this same difficult trail the party in which were my parents and my brothers and sisters.

THE Natchess Pass Trail, along which I must make my way, had been blazed by a party of intrepid pioneers during the summer of 1853. Fifteen thousand dollars had been appropriate...

On October 28, 1855, word came that all the settlers living on White River had been killed by the Indians and that the next day those in the Puyallup valley would be massacred....

IT was the fourteenth of March when I drove out of The Dalles to make the long overland journey. By rail, it is 1734 miles from The Dalles to Omaha, where our work of marking th...

DURING the ox-team days a mighty army of pioneers went West. In the year that we crossed (1852), when the migration was at its height, this army made an unbroken column fully fi...

IN the early '50's there lived near Indianapolis two young people. Their fathers were old-time farmers, keeping no "hired man" and buying very little "store goods." The girl cou...

OUR trail led straight across the Indian lands most of the way. The redmen naturally resented this intrusion into their territory; but they did not at this time fight against it...

HARDLY had we got fairly over the Indian War when another wave of excitement broke up our pioneer plans again. On March 21, 1858, the schooner _Wild Pigeon_ arrived at Steilacoo...

WE crossed the Missouri on the seventeenth and eighteenth of May. The next day we made a short drive, and camped within hearing of the shrill steamboat whistle that resounded fa...

AFTER the failure of the hop business, I was left more or less at sea for some years. I tried various other projects--among them the raising of sugar beets. The country, we soon...

WORN deep and wide by the migration of three hundred thousand people, lined by the graves of twenty thousand dead, witness of romance and tragedy, the Oregon Trail is unique in...

This map shows the main divisions of North America as they were when Ezra Meeker was born. The shading in the Arctic region shows how much there was still for the explorers to d...