The Oregon Trail
Most famous of the three chief routes that led to the promised lands of the Far West was the so-called Oregon Trail. By the middle forties, writes Gerald Rawling, the popular American interest in Oregon had become a fever.
A little over one hundred years ago, three great trails fanned out from the frontier town of St. Louis and spanned the little-known region of the American Far West. The first was a river route—the trail of Lewis and Clark and the early fur traders. It traced the dangerous, capricious course of the Missouri to its source, crossed the Continental Divide by way of Lemhi Pass; and ended with a difficult and hazardous canoe journey down the rapids of the Clearwater, the Snake and the Columbia to the Pacific.
The second trail was also a trade route. It served the flourishing commerce in manufactured goods between the American merchants of Missouri and the New Mexican settlements.
Lastly, there was the overland route to the Pacific via the Platte River and South Pass. The mountain men of the Fur Trade first broke this trail when hostile Indian activity on the Missouri closed the river to them; but it was the one-way traffic of the Great Migration to the Far West that made it the most famous of the three and gave it its name—The Oregon Trail.
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