Well it’s the middle of November now, so if you’re headed out Californi-way and you
haven’t made it through the Sierra Nevadas yet…
I hope you have some fat friends with you.
Before 1840…ish, if you wanted to get from the United States out west, your only real
option was to buy a $500 boat ticket and take the 7 month, 15,000 mile trip around Cape
Horn in South America.
While cruises today are rather luxurious, back in the 1840’s, when they still spelled
Christmas like this … not so much.
You could cut the time down by sailing to Panama, trekking through the rainforest, and
catching another boat, and assuming you didn’t get eaten by a jaguar or catch diarrhea and
die, you’d save yourself a whole $50.
But in 1840, 13 people made the trip along what would soon be known as the Oregon Trail…
and this became by far the cheapest route, costing between $150 and $200 per person,
covering 2000 miles.
While the Oregon Trail does technically refer to this specific route, from Independence,
Missouri to Oregon City, Oregon, it’s also the collective name given to the Oregon Trail, California
Trail, Bozeman Trail, Mormon Trail, and a few stage coach and pony express routes.
Since most of these trails all go along the same route before splitting off… for our
purposes, we’re going to refer to all of them as the Oregon Trail.
Quick side note, if you wanted to go out west, you first had to travel through the Midwest.
Which is the exact same reason why this place is called the Middle East.
By 1849, 18,847 people had crossed the Oregon Trail.
How do we know the exact number?
Because a number of forts were established along the way which kept track of the travelers
and protected them from… well there’s no easy way to say this… from the Native
Americans.
Whose land the settlers were technically trespassing through so… you know…
The forts also provided good old capitalists with places to set up shops and sell supplies,
snake oils, and trail guides (this becomes important later).
There were also a number of people known as wagon masters, who made a living taking settlers
back and forth along the trail.
But in 1849, use of the trail exploded.
Why… well you're smart, you probably know the answer already.
It’s gold.
In January 1848, gold was discovered in Sutter’s Mill, California.
And since they didn’t have the internet or ravens yet, it took a year for everyone else
to find out.
The sudden influx of migrants became known as the 49ers, which is where the name of the
football team comes from.
There were hundreds of ships left abandoned in San Francisco Harbor because people only
intended on making a one-way trip to strike it rich.
Over the next decade, the amount of people using the Oregon Trail skyrocketed to a total
of 296,300.
This is what it looks like when 300,000 people, their wagons and their oxen, all travel through
the exact same place.
There are several spots along the trail that still look like this over 150 years later,
where the soft limestone was slowly carved down by hundreds of thousands of travelers
all staying in the same ruts.
Even if there appears to be a much easier path right over there.
Seriously, I didn’t go somewhere else to get this shot, this is only a few feet away,
I don’t get it.
But these aren’t the only remnants left by the travelers.
On several spots along the Oregon Trail people felt compelled to carve their name into the
rock as a way to say “so and so was here.”
Old habits die hard I guess.
This is one spot known as Register Cliff.
Where people carved their names, where they’re from, and what year it… see?
This is why we can’t have nice things, because people like this, 150 years later making it
look like they made the trip too.
Wait, what?
Why is the 4 backwards?
I mean I guess that makes sense since they spell Christmas like this, but the 4 is the
correct way around right here… at least be consistently wrong!
This is another register site known as Independence Rock…
Named that way because if you didn’t make it there by July 4th, you probably weren’t
going to make it through the Sierra Nevadas in time.
Which is exactly what happened to the Donner Party.
They made it to Independence Rock two weeks too late, on July 17th 1846.
Now you may not think that two weeks is that big of a problem, sometimes winter arrives
a bit late, but sometimes it arrives early, but the Starks are always right in the end.
This was complicated by the fact that George Donner bought one of the aforementioned trail
trail guides…
Are you traveling out west?
Want to avoid all of those pesky Indians and Mexican tolls?
Would you like to shave 400 miles and two weeks off of the trip?
Of course you would!
Then you need The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California, the 1845 Pioneer’s Guide
for the Westward Traveler, by Lansford W. Hastings!
Take the road less traveled. Call 1-800-55...
You heard that right, the Hasting’s Cutoff claimed to shave 400 miles off of the trip.
Wyoming is 360 miles long end to end, so unless the cutoff looked something like this… it
obviously didn’t.
In fact, it adds 150 miles.
Combined with the fact that they were already two weeks behind schedule… well…
They made it to here by the beginning of November, when they broke an axle and that very night
were buried under snow drifts 60 feet high.
A wagon train could travel 10-15 miles a day.
They were only 2 or 3 days from the end of the trail.
On November 20, 1846, Patrick Breen starts a diary which becomes the primary source of
information for what happens next.
It snows just about every day for the entire month.
By Thanksgiving, they have completely run out of food.
And on Christmas Eve, they draw straws.
Patrick Dolan loses, but being good Christians, no one can bring themselves to actually do
it.
So they leave him to die to exposure.
Which actually takes a lot longer than you might think.
The human body is incredibly resilient so it doesn’t exactly happen overnight.
On Christmas Day, Patrick Breen wrote: “Offered our prayers to God this Cherimass
morning.
The prospect is appalling; but hope in God.
Amen.”
Mr. Dolan dies that night, and the next day, they enjoy a nice Christmas feast.
Crying and unable to look at each other the entire time.
Now you might be asking yourself why they didn’t eat the people who had already died,
and the answer is simple, the bodies were buried and being good Christians, they didn’t
want to dig up someone they already had a funeral for… yet.
They do later.
Bodies are cut up and labeled so that nobody accidentally eats their own family… because
you know, you have to keep some sort of morals right?
They aren’t rescued until March 1847, 6 months later.
Of the 89 people in the Donner Party, 41 died…
21 of them were cannibalized… including George Donner, which makes sense I guess.
Geez, did it get gloomy in here or what?
In 1858 gold was discovered in Pike’s Peak Colorado… yeah… yeah that’s happy right,
everyone loves gold!
This is where the Denver Nuggets get their name.
We seem to have a thing for naming sports teams after things that happened over a hundred
years ago.
All of these gold rushes made the Oregon and various other trails much more popular, at
least until the 1860’s when two major events happened.
The first being the Civil War which you might expect put somewhat of a damper on people
traveling out west.
But the second was the railroad, which followed the same basic path as the Oregon and California
trails.
While it took almost a decade to complete, the trail became heavily settled with a town
springing up every 50 miles.
The days of being a pioneer headed off into the unknown beyond were numbered.
When it was completed, it brought the trip from several months down to only a few days,
which basically ended the Oregon trail only 20 years after it started.
These two simultaneous events just kind of made the Oregon trail fall out of fashion.
So those who could afford the few days railroad trip out west obviously did.
Why would you still take the over a thousand mile trip on foot?
Because you’re a Mormon.
The tale of the Mormons is… interesting – and probably deserves a video to itself
*hint hint*.
But the main point here is that they were fleeing religious persecution and settled
in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1847, which at the time was outside of the United States.
All through the 1850s and 60s, Mormons made the trip from Nebraska to Utah, until they
became the primary users of the trail.
Especially for the poor European converts who couldn’t afford to make the trip by
rail.
They were often so poor that they couldn’t afford wagons and oxen and traveled by handcart
instead.
When we look back at history we often have a problem with timescales.
When talking about the fall of Rome, many people take events that occurred over centuries
and talk about them as if they all happened within the same decade.
With American History, we have the opposite problem.
The profession of cowboy only lasted 14 years… although that doesn’t stop people from dressing
up like one like it’s Halloween year-round, but whatever.
The Oregon Trail, for the most part, only lasted about 20 years, and if we want to get
fickle about it, was only in popular use for about ten.
While that might seem like a long time, it’s still shorter than the war in Afghanistan
so, you know, put some perspective on it.
And the next time someone offers to sell you a guide that will cut 400 miles off a trip
by taking a shortcut, hopefully now, you’ll know better.
I want to quickly thank everyone who took the survey I put up last week, your responses
are great and I plan on putting out an analysis on reddit in a few days.
But in the meantime don’t forget to cannibalize that subscribe button and follow me on facebook
and twitter.