I took a walk on the Oregon Trail this morning. The southern leg of the Trail goes through part of our farm. I bushwacked my way around healthy stands of silvery sagebrush and greasewood bushes covered in new, spring growth. Meadowlarks flitted and sang a sparkling song. In the distance, something white appeared, distinctive in the dun-colored landscape. I squinted my eyes to see the pale, fluffy backsides of two antelope. They grazed on a rising hill. When I turned in their direction, they spooked and ran. I knew what they were thinking: humans again. We can’t even eat our breakfast in peace. The silhouette of their pronged horns soon disappeared over the hill.
May is a month when rattlesnakes appear, so I treaded along with care. Yesterday I drove our old GMC pickup down a dusty, gravel road and passed either a rattler or a bull snake. Rattlesnakes are so prolific here the nearest town was once named Rattlesnake Station. Amazingly, the town survived—and even prospered. Pioneers on the Oregon Trail had to deal with snakebite among several other dangers.
Between 1843 and 1886 some 400,000 people crossed over 2000 miles.
Historians write that of all the hardships pioneers endured, they feared cholera the most. A slight morning fever could mean death by evening. Many didn’t know that drinking water from the Snake River could cause cholera.
Just ahead of me on my walk I saw the signpost marking the Oregon Trail. It’s pounded into the hard, desert ground between cultivated land and the wild river canyon. I stood beside it for a while searching the landscape, looking for a slight depression, the well-worn path took by pioneer wagons. Desert grasses made judging variations in the topography difficult. Sweeping my eyes back and forth I finally made out a dip, a trough winding up the hill.
One time my eight-year-old grandson Calvin came running into my kitchen with a porcelain chip from a plate or bowl he’d dug up in the field. As he handed it to me, I asked him, “Do you suppose this belonged to the Oregon Trail pioneers?” Calvin shrugged his shoulders. But my farmer husband and his father have plowed up several rusted-out pots and pans, even wheel rims and hubs pioneers left behind on their journey west.
Once Dale found the lever action of a rifle made in the 1800’s.
I hiked almost a mile on the Trail until it swerved close to State Highway 78. Several campers passed by on their way to Bruneau Sand Dunes and Strike Reservoir. I’ve read the pioneers traveled west seeking a better life, but maybe some were just seeking, looking for adventure or a new view. Narcissa Whitman was the first white woman to cross this rugged path. Her colorful letters home popularized the idea of traveling overland to Oregon. Though Narcissa and her husband’s purpose in coming west was to convert the Indians, her personal journals make it plain she had a hunger to explore the world and see new sights.
When we bought our farm forty-five years ago it belonged to a man named Dave. Dave purchased the property from old Don who homesteaded here 1922.
It was Don who told Dave about the pioneer gravesite.
Down one of our fields there used to be a cherry tree, and near the tree, a large pile of stones. Don, and then Dave after him, were careful to always plow around the stones. The gravesite is gone now, the stones scattered, but my husband told me he thinks he knows where it was once located.
Twenty-thousand people died on the Oregon Trail. That’s about ten people every mile. It’s difficult to imagine the risks the pioneers took walking the same path I merrily hiked this morning.
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