Oregon Trail

Oregon Trail. The Oregon Trail, important in American westward expansion, began at Independence, Missouri. Following the Platte River to Fort Laramie, it crossed the Rocky Mountains at South Pass, continued westward through Wyoming to James Bridger's fort and Fort Hall on the Snake River, and on to Oregon's Willamette valley.

The trail's role in American history dates to the early 1840s. Although the United States and Great Britain jointly administered Oregon, and Hudson's Bay Trading Company operated a major fur‐trading post there, expansion‐minded U.S. politicians and American settlers were determined to win the territory for the United States. Migration and settlement, they concluded, would best assure this goal. The glowing accounts of U.S. Protestant missionaries in Oregon aided the cause.

As “Oregon fever” swept the Mississippi valley, several small wagon trains made the six‐month trek over the Oregon Trail in 1841–1842; mass migration began in 1843. Injuries, thirst, poor diet, exhaustion, disease, and Indian attacks took a terrible toll. (Indians often assisted the migrants as well.) By 1844, with more than five thousand Americans in the Willamette valley, the “Oregon question” dominated U.S. politics. In that year's presidential election, voters in effect risked war with Great Britain by selecting the Democrat James Knox Polk on a platform committed to acquiring Oregon and the slogan “Fifty‐four forty or Fight.” The slogan referred to a willingness to fight Great Britain to secure all of the jointly administered Oregon territory. Fifty‐four degrees and forty minutes of north latitude was the northern boundary of the territory. By an 1846 treaty with Great Britain, the United States gained sole possession of Oregon, with the forty ninth parallel as its northern boundary; statehood followed in 1859. The Oregon Trail remained in heavy use until the railroads superseded it. Francis Parkman's classic The Oregon Trail (1849) helped secure its place in American memory.
See also Expansionism; Fur Trade; Indian History and Culture: From 1800 to 1900; Missionary Movement.

Bibliography

Francis Parkman , The Oregon Trail, 1849.
Jean Van Leeuwen , Bound for Oregon, 1994.

David E. Conrad