The most popular campsite along the Sweetwater was next to Independence Rock, so called because the schedules of many wagon trains brought them to the granite monument around the Fourth of July. Few emigrants passed by the rock without leaving their names or initials chiseled into its surface. In 1841, Father Pierre DeSmet, a Jesuit missionary, had spotted some names carved there by fur traders and called it "The Great Record of the Desert."
Even in July in this part of the country, emigrants shivered in early morning and night. At the Ice Slough, not quite 80 miles west of Independence Rock, a bed of ice lay about a foot beneath the sod even in the heat of the day. Travelers would chop out big chunks for their water casks, and some even made ice cream. The presence of ice in midsummer indicated that they had reached the highest point on the trail--the Continental Divide at South Pass.
Crossing the Snake River Ferry
The emigrants were sometimes disappointed with South Pass, for this passageway in the Wind River mountains was nothing like the deep gorge they had envisioned. Instead, the trail arched over a wide grassy meadow before dipping toward the Pacific Ocean. They celebrated their arrival in Oregon Territory with cheers and gunfire at nearby Pacific Springs, but most had no idea that hundreds of miles lay between them and their final goal.
After a night's rest at Pacific Springs the traveling parties would move on to Fort Bridger, a primitive trading post set up in 1843 by mountain man Jim Bridger, commonly known as Old Gabe. Since the fur trade was dwindling, he had built his fort to settle down and make a dollar or two selling fresh supplies and fresh oxen to emigrants. Many emigrants elected not to visit the fort, however, because it was shorter to follow a path across a grassless tableland--Sublette's Cutoff. On this barren 50-mile stretch, there was no water available until the Green River, on the far western side. Where the cutoff rejoined the main trail, the travelers headed northwest.
After traveling 70 miles in seven days, they would arrive at Soda Springs, where the naturally carbonated water was a treat for the travelers. Some said it tasted like beer. Others mixed it with sugar and citrus syrup to make lemonade. It was at Soda Springs in 1843 that young Jesse A. Applegate and the others met a group led by famed western explorer and cartographer John Charles Fremont. "There was a soda spring or pool between the camps, and Fremont's men were having a high time drinking soda water," recalled Jess. "They were so noisy that I suspected they had liquor mixed with the water."
Fifty-five miles beyond Soda Springs, at Fort Hall, another supply depot operated by the Hudson's Bay Company, the wagon trains split up, one part going to California and the other to Oregon. Those who took the California Trail veered southwest through an arid, rocky landscape and eventually, after 525 miles and a month's travel time, reached the Sierra Nevada. But first they had to get through the Great Basin around the Great Salt Lake. In the stark, arid land west of the Humboldt River, more than one traveler was "obliged to swallow dust all day in place of water," as one woman put it.
The Hudson's Bay Company agents at Fort Hall encouraged the emigrants to take the California route. Being of British descent and still trying to protect the fur business, they wanted to forestall the influx of settlers into Oregon country for as many more years as possible. Even so, their warnings about the road to Oregon--described as a deplorable succession of dangerous rivers, hostile Indians, famine and winter storms--were not far from reality.
The trail stretched out loosely for 300 miles along the south rims of the black lava canyons of the Snake River. The wagons struggled along paths strewn with boulders and knotted sage. Twice they risked deep crossings of the Snake River, fatal to some. The more dangerous of the two was the Three Island ford near the present-day town of Glenns Ferry, Idaho. William Newby wrote: "First we drove over a part of the river one hundred yards wide on to a island, then over a northern branch 75 yards wide on a second island; then we tide a string of waggons to gether by a chance in the ring of the lead carrles yoak and made fast to the waggon of all a horse & before & himn led. We carried as many as fifteen waggeons at one time. We had to up stream. The water was ten inches up the waggeon beds in the deep plaices. It was about 900 yards acraws."
Eventually, the wagons would be dragged up Burnt Canyon into present-day Oregon, skirt the treacherous swamps of the lovely Grande Ronde River valley, and finally climb slowly among the cold evergreens of the Blue Mountains. Far ahead, glinting in the sunlight, the weary travelers saw the curving sweep of the Columbia River, breaking a gateway through the tawny mesas that guarded the approach to the Cascade Range. Once past the Blue Mountains, the emigrants still faced a tough haul either by land (250 miles over the Cascades to the Willamette Valley) or by water (230 miles down the Columbia River).
Crossing the Blue Mountains in 1843 was particularly slow-going for the Oregon emigrants because of the forests and poor weather. Jesse A. Applegate recalled: "The timber had to be cut and removed to make way for the wagons. The trees were cut just near enough to the ground to allow the wagons to pass over the stumps, and the road through the forest was only cleared out wide enough for a wagon to pass along....We were overtaken by a snowstorm which made the passage very dismal. I remember wading through mud and snow and suffering from the cold and wet." Once out of the Blue Mountains, Jesse's spirits picked up briefly when he reached a stream lined with black hawthorns. "They were black and near the size of buckshot with a single seed, very sweet and otherwise pleasant to the taste...," he later wrote. "Our party ate large quantities of this fruit. It was told for a fact in camp that a woman died during the night we stayed there from the effects of a gorge of black haws. I ate about all I could get my hands on but experienced no bad results--they were ripe and mellow."
In late October, the Applegate train finally reached Fort Walla Walla. The Cascades still lay between the emigrants and their destination, the Willamette Valley. For the most part, the range rose a mile above sea level, with its most prominent peak, the white-capped Mount Hood, standing nearly a mile higher. Since they were unable to drive wagons through the Columbia's steep-walled, heavily timbered gorge, the men in the Applegate party spent aboout two weeks at Fort Walla Walla sawing lumber and building skiffs. Wagons, cattle and horses had to be left behind. By early November, a small fleet of boats was heading down the Columbia River toward the Willamette Valley. "I well remember our start down the river, and how I enjoyed riding in the boat, the movement of which was like a grapevine swing," recalled Jesse.
But the Columbia could be turbulent, and this final leg of the journey proved to be the worst ordeal of all. By the time the 1843 party started the river run they had been on the trail nearly five months. Four more weeks of travel, no less challenging for being on water, still remained. After they had been floating downstream for several days, the Applegates encountered approached the first set of rapids. Jesse rode in one boat with his parents, his Uncle Jesse, Aunt Cynthia and an Indian pilot. Another boat held Jesse's brothers Elisha and Warren and a cousin, Edward Applegate, all under 12, as well as two men in their early 20s, and 70-year-old Alexander McClellan. As the two boats approached a river bend, young Jesse heard "the sound of rapids, and presently the boat began to rise and fall and rock from side to side....I could see breakers ahead extending in broken lines across the river, and the boat began to sweep along at a rapid rate."
Jesse saw the other boat across the river and "presently there was a wail of anguish, a shriek, and scene of confusion in our boat that no language can describe. The boat we were watching disappeared and we saw the men and boys struggling in the water." Jesse's father and uncle wanted to leap into the water and try to save their drowning children, but they went back to manning the oars at the urging of Jesse's mother and aunt. "The men returned to the oars just in time to avoid, by great exertion, a rock against which the current dashed with such fury that the foam and froth upon its apex was as white as milk," Jesse later wrote.
The other boat was swept to the bottom by a whirlpool. Jesse's brother Elisha and the two men in their 20s made it safely to shore. Old McClellan had placed 9-year-old Edward on a pair of oars and tried to swim the boy to shore. But McClellan's strength soon gave out, and they both disappeared under the water. "The brave old soldier could have saved himself by abandoning the boy," wrote Jesse, "but this he would not do." The other person who had been on the skiff that capsized, Jesse's brother Warren, also drowned.
Jesse, who would turn 8 on November 14, and the other battered survivors regrouped and continued downriver. They were able to negotiate the other rapids without mishap. In late November 1843, they reached trail's end, Fort Vancouver, which had been built by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1825. The food and rest they found there was welcome, but soon it was time to face new tasks and challenges--building homes and dreams in Oregon's Willamette Valley.
The Applegates spent their first winter in log cabins at the "Old Mission" (where the small town of Gervais, Ore., now stands). Jesse A. Applegate, who would die at age 88 in 1919, wrote: "Oh, how we could have enjoyed our hospitable shelter if we could have looked around the family circle and beheld all the bright faces that had accompanied us on our toilsome journey almost to the end. Alas, they were not there!"
In 1844, there were 1,475 Oregon-bound emigrants; in 1845, 2,500 emigrants. Starting with the gold rush in 1849, more of the overland travelers chose California as their final destination, but Oregon still got its share. Between 1841 and 1866 about 350,000 people used what had become the most famous wagon route across America. It was no wonder that, in places, ruts along the Oregon Trail are still visible today.
Additional Sources:
www.isu.edu
www.univie.ac.at
www.thefurtrapper.com
www.artistnina.com
www.shebbyleetours.com
www.aspencountry.com
www.exploretheoldwest.org
hex.oucs.ox.ac.uk
www.beavton.k12.or.us
www.sam.math.ethz.ch
home.att.net/ ~carlsfriends
www.superkids.com
www.bobbrooke.com
www.ci.tumwater.wa.us
gladstone.uoregon.edu
darkwing.uoregon.edu
