Travelling down the interstate across the heartland of America it’s hard to imagine what it was like 170 years ago when the pioneers first set out west for a better life. What can now be covered in a few days took months of hardship and danger dealing with the likes of broken wheels, disease, and native Americans who were often less than welcoming to this new unknown tribe. The Lexus of the day (actually more of an RV) was a Conestoga wagon, which was outfitted with everything needed to live and establish a new life at the end of the journey.
The Oregon Trail, which began in Independence, Missouri, had been improved so much by the 1840s that it quickly became one of the main overland commerce and migration routes on the North American continent, competing with the already prosperous Santa Fe Trail to the south. It spanned over half the continent covering nearly 2,000 miles west through territories and land that later became six states, and ended in the fertile Willamette Valley in Oregon.
This image of wagons under Eagle Rock in Scott’s Bluff National Monument, Nebraska was typical of the day. Scott’s Bluff was an important landmark along the route both as a navigational aid for the wagon trains and as a psychological milestone for the pioneers. After travelling across the seemingly endless prairie, it was the first visual indication that the Great Plains were starting to give way to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and a better life beyond.
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