The Wendlands traveled the same routes taken by explorers and pioneers more than 150 years ago.
By Mike Wendland, F426141
October 2014
This year has been a grand year of touring for Jennifer and me, as well as for Tai, our Norwegian elkhound. Tai has waded in the Atlantic and Pacific, and tasted the water of all five Great Lakes, as well as rivers and mountain streams from the East Coast to the West.
In all, from May through September this year, we will have traveled close to 11,000 miles. But with all of that, what impressed us the most are the roadways we took that touched parts of two historic routes: the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the Oregon Trail.
It’s hard to overemphasize the importance of these two routes. Lewis and Clark were the first to blaze an overland route to the Pacific Ocean, thus opening up the United States to east-west travel in the years after the Louisiana Purchase. It was a trip that, in its day, was as monumental as the American landing on the moon.
The Oregon Trail pioneers began to migrate west four decades or so later in their prairie schooners — so named because the white canvas that covered the wagons gave them the appearance of ships at sea. Other travelers took routes that sprang off the Oregon Trail on paths called the California Trail and the Mormon Trail.
Retracing some of those routes in our motorhome — the modern equivalent of a covered wagon — was a stimulating journey.
It all started with the wide Missouri River. At 2,341 miles, the Missouri is the longest in North America. It is impressive to behold. But what you see today is much less than what 19th-century explorers and pioneers encountered. Channelization and dam building have greatly changed the river. Today, 67 percent of the Missouri is either channelized for navigation (650 miles) or impounded by dams (903 miles). Most of the remaining free-flowing portions of the river are near the headwaters in Montana. Because of channelization, the lower river today is about 50 percent narrower.
But, it is still impressive, and realizing that it was bigger and wider and wilder 200 years ago makes you wonder how explorers used it for navigation.
Nicknamed the “Big Muddy,” the Missouri River has long been one of North America’s most important travel routes. Every bend in the river is saturated in history. Its waters saw the canoes of many American Indian tribes, fur trappers, explorers, and pioneers. The river served as the main route to the Northwest for Lewis and Clark, and later became the primary pathway for the nation’s western expansion. The Missouri has witnessed the rise and fall of the steamboat era and given birth to countless communities that settled near her banks.
We started our tour in St. Louis, Missouri, where the Missouri flows into the Mississippi at a place called Confluence Point. Standing where the nation’s mightiest two rivers merge, it’s hard not to think of all the dreams, hopes, and aspirations that welled up in the hearts of those who headed west from this spot. To get here, Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery took the Ohio River to the Mississippi, then the Mississippi to the Missouri, beginning their official expedition in May 1804.
As we moved west, we picked up the Oregon Trail. The Oregon Trail, and the ancillary trails that led from it, constituted the single greatest migration in America. From 1843 to 1866, as many as a half a million men, women, and children traveled this way by wagon and by foot.
Many books and academic experts can provide information about the trail. But when it really comes to knowing the trail and experiencing it, few can match Morris Carter.
Carter has built wagons that replicate those used by the pioneers, and he’s actually made the 2,600-mile wagon train trip himself, from its start in Independence, Missouri, to the final destination in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. He followed that 1993 journey with a similar trek in 1999 along the 2,500 miles of the California Trail. Carter uses a wagon pulled by horses along the same routes traversed by those who settled the West.
Today, from his home in Casper, Wyoming, he leads wagon trail excursions using a route that parallels the still-visible ruts left by those who traveled the Oregon Trail 150 years ago. His company, Historic Trails West, offers trips ranging from four hours to overnight and weeklong events. Those who travel with him stay overnight in teepees, eat Wyoming steak dinners around a campfire, and glean information from Carter’s encyclopedic knowledge of what it was really like to make the trip, which typically took six months.
“There are a lot of misconceptions about the Oregon Trail,” Carter told me. “It wasn’t just one wagon most families took; it was two or three. They took everything they had to set up and furnish their new homes in the West. And the trail was usually crowded. The string of wagons often stretched out in front and in back as far you could see. The wagons would be sometimes ten across. They’d average two miles an hour when pulled by oxen; maybe four if by horses.”
As I walked alongside the wagon taking photos on one of Carter’s tours, he repeatedly warned me to watch for rattlesnakes. I didn’t see any. Thankfully. “They’re all over out here,” he said. “Fortunately, they’re watching for you, too.”
No wonder Jennifer decided to stay in the wagon.
In the original migration, most people walked, Carter said. This made it easier on the animals. “Some walked the entire way,” he said. “Many were barefoot.”
The biggest danger was accidents. Adults and kids fell off wagons or under them; were trampled or kicked by a horse; or were bitten by snakes. Disease was widespread, especially cholera. The pioneers had a saying about the thousands who died from the intestinal disease: “Healthy at breakfast, in the grave by noon.”
Indeed, as Jennifer and I have visited various spots along the Oregon Trail from Missouri westward, we have seen several gravesites of pioneers who died along the trail.
There were also Indian attacks. One wagon train was wiped out just a couple of miles from the route we traveled. The same band of Indians also killed an entire cavalry platoon sent out to protect the ill-fated wagon train.
What amazed us as we rode the wagon across the countryside was how hilly it was. The tall prairie grass makes it look flat and smooth from a distance. Up close, it is a bone-jarring, bumpy ride that constantly seems to be rising and falling.
At camp, we joined the tour for dinner: steaks grilled over a campfire, baked potatoes, rolls, green beans and bacon, and cherry cobbler baked in a Dutch oven. As the others retreated to their teepees after dark, we went to our motorhome, which we had driven out to the prairie campsite.
Over coffee the next morning, Carter told me he was looking for help in running his expeditions and thought a work-camping RV couple would be perfect. If you would like to help drive the wagons, care for the horses, and prepare the meals, he may have a job for you. He has full hookups on his property. Historic Trails West can be contacted at (307) 266-4868; e-mail trailcaptain@historictrailswest.com; www.historictrailswest.com.
The trip was one of the most interesting and enjoyable we’ve ever had. The prairie is beautiful, even when dark clouds bearing lightning and a sudden downpour swept down over the mountains. It has a vastness about it, like the ocean, spreading out wide and full beneath a big sky that bottoms out against a range of low-lying mountains. Antelope bound over the little grass hills, and eagles float overhead.
I highly recommend the experience, although you need to be in halfway decent shape, without back or neck problems. Those wagons are pretty bouncy, and riding a horse for extended periods of time does require a basic level of physical health.
If you’d like to retrace those trails, contact the National Park Service and ask for their historic trail guides. They have excellent auto-touring maps and booklets that will take you along the same routes the pioneers traveled.
Wagons, ho!