The trail lost popularity in with the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, which made the trip more affordable and quicker. Where did they arrive in California? The end of the Trail has been described as taking on a frayed rope appearance. There was not one destination in California; once emigrants crossed over the Sierra Nevada, they dispersed often to the nearest gold strike.
What does an elephant have to do with the California Trail? It was used to describe the Trail and the West to others. Later, this expression also came to describe the fear of the unknown that many emigrants encountered along the trail. It makes sense that such a huge, strange beast came to symbolize the California Trail: an experience that could not be described with words alone.
Can you still see the California Trail? The California Trail is still visible on your Public Lands. Southern Nevada Conservancy , a c3 nonprofit organization based in Las Vegas, NV, works cooperatively with the Bureau of Land Management through a formal agreement to provide education, informational, and other public services that will add to visitors understanding and enjoyment of the California Trail Interpretive Center.
These programs include California Trail Interpretive Center programs, interpretive programming, volunteer management, retail operations, social media outreach, and this website. Our Mission. We are open from 9 am to 4 pm, Friday and Saturday. We hope to extend these hours very soon. What is the difference between the California Trail and the Oregon Trail? Instead it is a corridor that passes through different states and land ownership.
Visitors can follow segments of the original trail on public lands and approximate other sections by following the trail's Auto Tour Routes. However, many parts of the original trail are privately owned, have been lost to development, are under plow, or cross military or American Indian tribal reserves.
Unless clearly marked, there is no public trail access across private property and reserves. Before entering those lands, you must locate the owners and ask their permission.
To view an interactive map of the official trail visit Places to Go. Where can I get my Passport stamped? Passport Stamp locations along the Oregon Trail. Do you have educational materials for teachers? We do not currently have any teacher or student specific products. We would be happy to mail you our official map and guide brochure for your classroom. Email us with your contact information, mailing address, and the quantity of brochures you need for your class. Did Indians really attack wagon trains?
Occasionally wagon trains were attacked, but not nearly as often as one might think from watching old Western movies. Historians believe that many attacks on wagon trains were led by so-called "white Indians," white criminals who thinly disguised themselves as Indians and sometimes enlisted the help of actual Indians to rob emigrants.
Most emigrant encounters with American Indians along the overland trails were peaceful. It was as if the land itself were pulling the people westward. Many of these restless souls had heard of the success of Joe Meek and his friend Bob Newell, who had made it to Oregon in Meek and Newell managed to get the first wheeled vehicles over the Blue Mountains.
The next year, John Bidwell and John Bartleson traveled what would later be christened the Oregon Trail on the first planned overland emigration west to California.
At Soda Springs in what is now southwest Idaho one contingent split off for Oregon. In , Dr. Elijah White, the newly appointed Indian agent in Oregon, successfully led men, women and children there. But the real thrust westward came the following year, when the Oregon Trail took on a new significance thanks to the so-called Great Emigration.
Peter Burnett was chosen captain, and a so-called cow column for slower wagons and herds of livestock was formed with Jesse Applegate as its leader. Applegate would later provide descriptions of life on the Oregon Trail in his memoir, A Day with the Cow Column in Mountain man John Gant was to be chief guide as far as Fort Hall. They would follow the trail left by Meek and Newell. Marcus Whitman, a Protestant missionary and physician who had established a mission in Oregon in , would join the Applegate train on his return west after an eastern visit.
Doctors came to be a welcome rarity along the trail. Along with his uncle, Jess traveled with his parents, four brothers, one sister and numerous other relatives. Years later, when he was in his 70s, he wrote Recollections of My Boyhood , in which he largely succeeds in portraying events and personalities from the western crossing through the eyes of a young boy.
As the Applegate party journeyed across the prairies and over the Rockies, the trek had mostly seemed like grand fun to the boy. At first his recollections bubble with the thrill of adventure. He had traded nails and bits of metal with Indian children and thrown buffalo chips at other white children. Later, though, the recollections become more somber. Jesse A.
Applegate had also experienced the suffering that almost no early traveler on the Oregon Trail could avoid. Food supplies would inevitably become low and water scarce. A bone-wrenching weariness would set in as the miseries mounted. The U. But as the emigrants pushed overland, many lost sight of the vision that had set them going.
The weight of hardship piled on hardship was enough, on occasion, to make men and women break down and cry, and perhaps even turn back. Yet most travelers summoned up reserves of courage and kept going.
They endured every hardship from a mule kick in the shins to cholera. The ones who got through usually did so because of sheer determination. The Applegate train began to assemble in late April, the best time to get rolling. The date of departure had to be selected with care. If they began the more than 2,mile journey too early in the spring, there would not be enough grass on the prairie to keep the livestock strong enough to travel.
Animals would begin to sicken, slowing up the train. Such slowdowns would often throw off the schedule and sometimes cause major problems down the road. If they waited too long they might later be trapped in the mountains by early winter storms. Over the years, other wagon trains used Westport, Leavenworth and St. Joseph as jumping-off points. The Applegate train used Independence, preeminent since as an outfitting center.
Since the majority of emigrants were farmers with families, they often chose Murphy farm wagons as their chief means of transport. Conestoga wagons, which weighed one-and-a-half tons tons empty, were too heavy for travel where there were no roads. The heavier the wagon, the more likely it would bog down in mud or cause the team to break down. Oregon-bound travelers were advised to keep their wagons weighing less than one-and-a-half tons fully loaded.
The wagons had by-three-and-a-half foot bodies, and their covers were made of canvas or a waterproofed sheeting called osnaburg. Frames of hickory bows supported the cloth tops, which protected pioneers from rain and sun. The rear wheels were five or six feet in diameter, but the front wheels were four feet or less so that they would not jam against the wagon body on sharp turns.
Metal parts were kept to a minimum because of the weight, but the tires were made of iron to hold the wheels together and to protect the wooden rims. The rims and spokes would still sometimes crack and split, of course, and in the dry air of the Great Plains, they were also likely to shrink, which eventually caused the iron tires to slip off.
In fact, when rivers were too deep to be forded and there was no timber to build rafts, the travelers would remove the wheels and float the wagons across. Once he had selected a wagon or two, the pioneer next had to decide on his draft animals. Most emigrants, including Captain Burnett, swore by oxen. Unfortunately, they also had their drawbacks.
Their cloven hoofs tended to splinter on mountain rocks, and oxen could only do about 15 miles a day, while mules did Prosperous families usually took two or more wagons because the typical wagon did not have a large carrying capacity. After flour sacks, food, furniture, clothes and farm equipment were piled on, not much space remained.
Space was so limited that, except in terrible weather, most travelers cooked, ate and slept outside. The members of the Applegate train often killed buffalo and antelope, but a more dependable supply of meat was the herd of cattle led behind the wagons. Once the wagons were loaded, the animals gathered and the emigrants reasonably organized, Captain Peter Burnett finally gave the signal for the Applegates and the others to move out.
The train included nearly 1, persons of both sexes, more than wagons, oxen and nearly loose cattle. The Great Emigration of had begun. Out on the plains in the middle of May, the grass was luxuriant and the wildflowers out in force.
The spring storms were often startling in their power. The first miles were a hubbub. Ill-broken oxen and reluctant mules either bolted or sulked in harness, entangled themselves in picket ropes or escaped entirely and sped back to the starting point. When not busy rounding up livestock, the exuberant males of the party quarreled over firewood and water holes and raced for preferred positions in line.
Still, for the most part, the travelers had it relatively easy during the first few weeks on the trail as they headed northwest toward Nebraska and the Platte River. Despite the occasional thunderstorm, the weather was usually pleasant.
It was a good time to learn to handle a prairie schooner. Jesse Applegate wrote about the workings of a typical day on the trail:. This corral of the plains was made the night before by parking the wagons in a circle.
The rear wagon was connected with the wagon in front by its tongue and ox chains. It was strong enough to keep the oxen from breaking out, and also served as a barricade in case of Indian attack. Promptly at seven, the bugle sounded, and the wagon train was on its way.
Women and children often walked beside the trail, gathering wild flowers and odd-looking stones. Boys and young men on horseback kept the loose stock from straying too far, as they trailed along behind the wagons. At noon, we stopped to eat. Oxen were turned loose with their yokes on, so they might graze and rest.
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