Oregon Trail
The Oregon Trail was a east–west, large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail in North America that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon Territory. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail crossed what is now the states of Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming. The western half crossed the current states of Idaho and Oregon.
The Oregon Trail was laid by fur traders and trappers from about 1811 to 1840 and was initially only passable on foot or horseback. By 1836, when the first migrant wagon train was organized in Independence, Missouri, a wagon trail had been cleared to Fort Hall, Idaho. Wagon trails were cleared increasingly farther west and eventually reached the Willamette Valley in Oregon, at which point what came to be called the Oregon Trail was complete. Further improvements in the form of bridges, cutoffs, ferries, and roads made the trip faster and safer. From starting points in Iowa, Missouri, or Nebraska Territory, the routes converged along the lower Platte River Valley near Fort Kearny, Nebraska Territory. They led to fertile farmlands west of the Rocky Mountains.
The Oregon Trail and its many offshoots were used by about 400,000 settlers, farmers, miners, ranchers, and business owners and their families to get to the area known as Oregon and its surroundings, with traffic especially thick from 1846 to 1869. The eastern half of the trail was also used by travelers on the California Trail from 1843, the Mormon Trail from 1847, and the Bozeman Trail from 1863, before turning off to their separate destinations. Use of the trail declined after the first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, making the trip west substantially faster, cheaper, and safer. Since the mid-20th century, modern highways, such as Interstate 80 and Interstate 84, follow parts of the same course westward, and pass through towns originally established to serve those using the Oregon Trail.
History
Lewis and Clark Expedition
The first land route across the present-day contiguous United States was mapped by the Lewis and Clark Expedition between 1804 and 1806, following these 1803 instructions from President Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis: "The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river, and such principal stream of it, as, by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregon, Colorado and/or other river may offer the most direct and practicable water communication across this continent, for commerce." Although Lewis and William Clark found a path to the Pacific Ocean, it was neither direct nor practicable for prairie schooner wagons to pass through without considerable road work. The two passes they found going through the Rocky Mountains, Lemhi Pass, and Lolo Pass, turned out to be much too difficult.On the return trip in 1806, they traveled from the Columbia River to the Snake River and the Clearwater River over the Lolo Pass again. They then traveled overland up the Blackfoot River and crossed the Continental Divide at Lewis and Clark Pass, as it would become known, and on to the head of the Missouri River. This was ultimately a shorter and faster route than the one they followed west. This route had the disadvantages of being much too rough for wagons and controlled by the Blackfoot tribes.
Even though Lewis and Clark had only traveled a narrow portion of the upper Missouri River drainage and part of the Columbia River drainage, these were considered the two major rivers draining most of the Rocky Mountains, and the expedition confirmed that there was no "easy" route through the northern Rocky Mountains as Jefferson had hoped. Nonetheless, this famous expedition mapped both the eastern and western river valleys that bookend the route of the Oregon Trail across the continental dividethey just had not located the South Pass or some of the interconnecting valleys later used in the high country. They showed the way for the mountain men, who within a decade found a better way across, even if it was not an easy way.
Pacific Fur Company
It was founded in 1810 by John Jacob Astor as a subsidiary of his American Fur Company, the Pacific Fur Company operated in the Pacific Northwest in the North American fur trade. Two movements of PFC employees were planned by Astor: one sent to the Columbia River aboard the merchant ship Tonquin, the other dispatched overland under an expedition led by Wilson Price Hunt. Hunt and his party were to find possible supply routes and trapping territories for further fur trading posts. Upon arriving at the river in March 1811, the Tonquin crew began building what became Fort Astoria. The ship left supplies and men to continue work on the station and ventured north up the coast to Clayoquot Sound for a trading expedition. While anchored there, Jonathan Thorn insulted an elder Tla-o-qui-aht who was previously elected by the natives to negotiate a mutually satisfactory price for animal pelts. Soon after, the vessel was attacked and overwhelmed by the indigenous Clayoquot, killing many of the crew. Its Quinault interpreter survived and later told the PFC management at Fort Astoria of the destruction. The next day, the ship was blown up by surviving crew members.Under Hunt, fearing attack by the Niitsitapi, the overland expedition veered south of Lewis and Clark's route into what is now Wyoming and in the process passed across Union Pass and into Jackson Hole, Wyoming. From there they went over the Teton Range via Teton Pass and then down to the Snake River into modern Idaho. They abandoned their horses at the Snake River, made dugout canoes, and attempted to use the river for transport. After a few days' travel, they soon discovered that steep canyons, waterfalls, and impassable rapids made travel by river impossible. Too far from their horses to retrieve them, they had to cache most of their goods and walk the rest of the way to the Columbia River where they made new boats and traveled to the newly established Fort Astoria. The expedition demonstrated that much of the route along the Snake River plain and across to the Columbia was passable by pack train or with minimal improvements, even wagons. This knowledge would be incorporated into the concatenated trail segments as the Oregon Trail took its early shape.
Pacific Fur Company partner Robert Stuart led a small group of men back east to report to Astor. The group planned to retrace the path followed by the overland expedition back up to the east following the Columbia and Snake Rivers. Fear of a Native American attack near Union Pass in Wyoming forced the group further south where they discovered South Pass, a wide and easy pass over the Continental Divide. The party continued east via the Sweetwater River, North Platte River, and Platte River to the Missouri River, finally arriving in St. Louis in the spring of 1813. The route they had used appeared to potentially be a practical wagon route, requiring minimal improvements, and Stuart's journals provided a meticulous account of most of the route. Because of the War of 1812 and the lack of U.S. fur trading posts in the Pacific Northwest, most of the route was unused for more than 10 years.
North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company
In August 1811, three months after Fort Astoria was established, David Thompson and his team of North West Company explorers came floating down the Columbia to Fort Astoria. He had just completed a journey through much of western Canada and most of the Columbia River drainage system. He was mapping the country for possible fur trading posts. Along the way, he camped at the confluence of the Columbia and Snake Rivers and posted a notice claiming the land for Britain and stating the intention of the North West Company to build a fort on the site. When the War of 1812 broke out, the managers at Fort Astoria were concerned the British navy would seize their forts and supplies, and in 1813 they sold out to the North West Company.By 1821, intense competition between the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company reached the point of armed hostilities, and the British government pressured the two companies to merge. The newly reconfigured HBC had a near monopoly on trading in the Columbia District, or Oregon Country as it was referred to by the Americans, and also in Rupert's Land. That year the British parliament passed a statute applying the laws of Upper Canada to the district and giving the HBC power to enforce those laws.
From 1813 to the early 1840s the British, through the NWC and HBC, had nearly complete control of the Pacific Northwest and the western half of the Oregon Trail. In theory, the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812, restored possession of U.S. property in Oregon territory to the United States. "Joint occupation" of the region was formally established by the Anglo-American Convention of 1818. The British, through the HBC, tried to discourage any U.S. trappers, traders, and settlers from work or settlement in the Pacific Northwest.
By overland travel, American missionaries and early settlers started showing up in Oregon in the late 1820s. Although officially the HBC discouraged settlement because it interfered with its lucrative fur trade, its manager at Fort Vancouver, John McLoughlin, gave substantial help, including employment, until they could get established. In the early 1840s thousands of American settlers arrived and soon greatly outnumbered the British settlers in Oregon. McLoughlin, despite working for the HBC, gave help in the form of loans, medical care, shelter, clothing, food, supplies and seed to U.S. emigrants. These new emigrants often arrived in Oregon tired, worn out, nearly penniless, with insufficient food or supplies, just as winter was coming on. McLoughlin would later be hailed as the Father of Oregon.
The York Factory Express, establishing another route to the Oregon territory, evolved from an earlier express brigade used by the North West Company between Fort Astoria and Fort William, Ontario on Lake Superior. By 1825 the HBC started using two brigades, each setting out from opposite ends of the express route—one from Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River and the other from York Factory on Hudson Bay—in spring and passing each other in the middle of the continent. This established a "quick"— about 100 days for one way— to transport personnel and transmit messages between Fort Vancouver and York Factory on Hudson Bay.
The HBC built a new much larger Fort Vancouver in 1825 about 90 miles upstream from Fort Astoria, on the north side of the Columbia River. The fort quickly became the center of activity in the Pacific Northwest. Every year ships would come from London to the Pacific to drop off supplies and trade goods in its trading posts in the Pacific Northwest and pick up the accumulated furs used to pay for these supplies. It was the nexus for the fur trade on the Pacific Coast; its influence reached from the Rocky Mountains to the Hawaiian Islands, and from Russian Alaska into Mexican-controlled California. At its pinnacle in about 1840, the manager of Fort Vancouver watched over 34 outposts, 24 ports, 6 ships, and about 600 employees.
When American emigration over the Oregon Trail began in earnest in the early 1840s, for many settlers the fort became the last stop on the Oregon Trail where they could get supplies, aid, and help before starting their homesteads. Fort Vancouver was the main re-supply point for nearly all Oregon trail travelers until U.S. towns could be established. The HBC established Fort Colvile in 1825 on the Columbia River near Kettle Falls as a good site to collect furs and control the upper Columbia River fur trade. Fort Nisqually was built near the present town of DuPont, Washington, and was the first HBC fort on Puget Sound. Fort Victoria was erected in 1843 and became the headquarters of operations in British Columbia, eventually growing into modern-day Victoria, the capital city of British Columbia.
By 1840, the HBC had three forts: Fort Hall, Fort Boise and Fort Nez Perce on the western end of the Oregon Trail route as well as Fort Vancouver near its terminus in the Willamette Valley. With minor exceptions, they all gave substantial and often desperately needed aid to the early Oregon Trail pioneers.
When the fur trade slowed in the 1840s because of fashion changes in men's hats, the value of the Pacific Northwest to the British was seriously diminished. Canada had few potential settlers who were willing to move more than to the Pacific Northwest, although several hundred ex-trappers, British and American, and their families did start settling in what became Oregon and Washington. In 1841, James Sinclair, on orders from HBC Governor Sir George Simpson, guided nearly 200 settlers from the Red River Colony into the Oregon territory. This attempt at settlement failed when most of the families joined the settlers in the Willamette Valley, with their promise of free land and HBC-free government.
In 1846, the Oregon Treaty ending the Oregon boundary dispute was signed with Britain. The British lost much of the land they had so long controlled. The new Canada–United States border was established at the 49th parallel to the Pacific Coast, then dipping south around Vancouver Island. The treaty granted the HBC navigation rights on the Columbia River for supplying their fur posts, clear titles to their trading post properties allowing them to be sold later if they wanted, and left the British with a good anchorage at Victoria. It gave the United States most of what it wanted, a "reasonable" boundary and a good anchorage on the West Coast in Puget Sound. While there were few United States settlers in the future state of Washington in 1846, the United States had already demonstrated it could induce thousands of settlers to go to the Oregon Territory, and it would be only a short time before they would vastly outnumber the few hundred HBC employees and retirees living in the region.