The Oregon Trail was a 2,170-mile (3,490 km) east–west, large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail in the United States that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon Territory. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of what is now the state of Kansas and nearly all of what are now the states of Nebraska and Wyoming. The western half of the trail spanned most of the current states of Idaho and Oregon.
Meriwether Lewis was an American explorer, soldier, politician, and public administrator, best known for his role as the leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery, with William Clark. Their mission was to explore the territory of the Louisiana Purchase, establish trade with, and sovereignty over the natives near the Missouri River, and claim the Pacific Northwest and Oregon Country for the United States before European nations. They also collected scientific data, and information on indigenous nations. President Thomas Jefferson appointed him Governor of Upper Louisiana in 1806. He died in 1809 of gunshot wounds, in what was either a murder or suicide.
A mountain man is an explorer who lives in the wilderness and makes his living from hunting and trapping. Mountain men were most common in the North American Rocky Mountains from about 1810 through to the 1880s. They were instrumental in opening up the various emigrant trails allowing Americans in the east to settle the new territories of the far west by organized wagon trains traveling over roads explored and in many cases, physically improved by the mountain men and the big fur companies, originally to serve the mule train-based inland fur trade.
South Pass is a route across the Continental Divide, in the Rocky Mountains in southwestern Wyoming. It lies in a broad high region, 35 miles (56 km) wide, between the nearly 14,000 ft (4,300 m) Wind River Range to the north and the over 8,500 ft (2,600 m) Oregon Buttes and arid, saline near-impassable Great Divide Basin to the south. The Pass lies in southwestern Fremont County, approximately 35 miles (56 km) SSW of Lander.
The Mormon Trail is the 1,300-mile (2,100 km) long route from Illinois to Utah on which Mormon pioneers traveled from 1846–47. Today, the Mormon Trail is a part of the United States National Trails System, known as the Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail.
Fort Hall was a fort in the Western United States that was built in 1834 as a fur trading post by Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth. It was located on the Snake River in the eastern Oregon Country, now part of present-day Bannock County in southeastern Idaho. Wyeth was an inventor and businessman from Boston, Massachusetts, who also founded a post at Fort William, in present-day Portland, Oregon, as part of a plan for a new trading and fisheries company. In 1837, unable to compete with the powerful British Hudson's Bay Company, based at Fort Vancouver, Wyeth sold both posts to it. Great Britain and the United States both operated in the Oregon Country in these years.
The Mormon pioneers were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as Latter-day Saints, who migrated beginning in the mid-1840s until the late-1860s across the United States from the Midwest to the Salt Lake Valley in what is today the U.S. state of Utah. At the time of the planning of the exodus in 1846, the territory comprising present-day Utah was part of the Republic of Mexico, with which the U.S. soon went to war over a border dispute left unresolved after the annexation of Texas. The Salt Lake Valley became American territory as a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the war.
Ezra Morgan Meeker was an American pioneer who traveled the Oregon Trail by ox-drawn wagon as a young man, migrating from Iowa to the Pacific Coast. Later in life he worked to memorialize the Trail, repeatedly retracing the trip of his youth. Once known as the "Hop King of the World", he was the first mayor of Puyallup, Washington.
William Keil was the founder of 19th-century communal religious societies in Bethel, Missouri, and Aurora Colony in Oregon.
The Mormon handcart pioneers were participants in the migration of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to Salt Lake City, Utah, who used handcarts to transport their belongings. The Mormon handcart movement began in 1856 and continued until 1860.
Naches Pass is a mountain pass in the Cascade Range in the state of Washington. It is located about 50 miles (80 km) east of Tacoma and about 50 miles (80 km) northwest of Yakima, near the headwaters of tributary streams of the Naches River on the east and the Greenwater River on the west. The boundaries of Pierce, King, Kittitas, and Yakima counties come together at the pass. The pass lies on the boundary between the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie and Wenatchee National Forests, about 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Mount Rainier National Park. There are no roadways or railways crossing the pass.
Menlo is a small unincorporated community in the Willapa Valley of Pacific County, Washington, United States. The community is home to a general store and post office, the Pacific County Fairgrounds and a secondary/high school — Willapa Valley High School.
Jesse Applegate was an American pioneer who led a large group of settlers along the Oregon Trail to the Oregon Country. He was an influential member of the early government of Oregon, and helped establish the Applegate Trail as an alternative route to the Oregon Trail.
The Sager orphans were the children of Henry and Naomi Sager. In April 1844 the Sager family took part in the great westward migration and started their journey along the Oregon Trail. During it, both Henry and Naomi died and left their seven children orphaned. Later adopted by Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, missionaries in what is now Washington, they were orphaned a second time, when both their new parents, as well as brothers John and Francis Sager, were killed during the Whitman massacre in November 1847. About 1860 Catherine, the oldest daughter, wrote a first-hand account of their journey across the plains and their life with the Whitmans. Today it is regarded as one of the most authentic accounts of the American westward migration.
Peter Grant Stewart was a jeweler and pioneer of the Oregon Country in what later became the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington. A native of New York state, he traveled the Oregon Trail to the Willamette Valley and settled first in Oregon City and later in what became Washington. He was served on the Second Executive Committee of the Provisional Government of Oregon, and his homesite became part of Fort Canby at the mouth of the Columbia River.
Cornelius Gilliam was a pioneer of the U.S. state of Oregon who was best known as the commander of the volunteer forces against the Cayuse in the Cayuse War. A native of North Carolina, he served in the Black Hawk War and Seminole Wars before settling in Missouri. There he served in the militia against the Mormons, was a county sheriff, and a member of the Missouri State Senate before immigrating to the Oregon Country.
David Thomas Lenox was an American pioneer who settled in the Oregon Country where he organized the first Baptist Church west of the Rocky Mountains. A native of New York, he lived in Illinois and Missouri before he was captain of the first wagon train over the Oregon Trail to what became the state of Oregon. He also organized several schools and churches, and served as a judge and justice of the peace. In Oregon, he settled on the Tualatin Plains near what is now Hillsboro and later lived in Eastern Oregon.
In the history of the American frontier, pioneers built overland trails throughout the 19th century, especially between 1840 and 1847 as an alternative to sea and railroad transport. These immigrants began to settle much of North America west of the Great Plains as part of the mass overland migrations of the mid-19th century. Settlers emigrating from the eastern United States did so with various motives, among them religious persecution and economic incentives, to move from their homes to destinations further west via routes such as the Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails. After the end of the Mexican–American War in 1849, vast new American conquests again encouraged mass immigration. Legislation like the Donation Land Claim Act and significant events like the California Gold Rush further encouraged settlers to travel overland to the west.
Aurora Colony, also called Aurora Mills, was a Christian utopian communal society founded in 1856 by William Keil in modern-day Aurora, Oregon, US. At its peak in 1868, the Aurora Colony had about 600 people and 15,000 acres (6,100 ha) of land. The colony, along with Keil's previously established Bethel colony, was formally dissolved in 1883. In 1974, about 150 acres (61 ha) and 12 buildings of the former colony were inscribed on the National Register of Historic Places as parts of the Aurora Colony Historic District.
The Willapa Hills Trail is a 56.0-mile (90.1 km) intercounty rail trail in the U.S. state of Washington that is part of the Willapa Hills State Park. Following an east–west route alongside State Route 6, the tract links Chehalis and South Bend, traveling through or near several small towns and parks along the way. Overseen by the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission, local cities and towns often maintain areas of the trail within their jurisdictions. The trail is built upon a decommissioned railroad track.
