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The
Lewis and Clark Trail
The
journey of the Corps of Discovery from the Mississippi
River to the Pacific Ocean was one of the most
monumental episodes in the early history of the United
States. President Thomas Jefferson who had always had an
interest in the Transmississippi West and had just
arranged to purchase France's Louisiana Territory
planned the Corps multifaceted goals. Jefferson greatly
desired increased knowledge about the geography, people,
plants, animals, minerals, and weather of the West, a
place where it was rumored wooly mammoths still existed,
where lived blue-eyed Indians who spoke Welsh, and where
an all-water "Northwest Passage" provided an
easy route across the continent.
Jefferson
also hoped to persuade the Indian Nations that inhabited
the Louisiana Territory that the United States had only
the friendliest of intentions and also to counteract the
claims of various European powers to the "Oregon
Country" in the Columbia River Basin.
Jefferson
chose his personal secretary Meriwether Lewis to lead
the expedition and Lewis asked his former commanding
officer William Clark to be co-commander. On May 14
these two able Virginians set out with a party of 46
(including Lewis's dog) hauling a keelboat up the
Missouri. By the end of July they had reached the
present day area of Council Bluffs, Iowa which was named
for the "Council Bluffe" where the Corps had
their first council with the Indian Nations. It would
take the expedition another year and four months across
the Plains and through the mountains (where no Northwest
Passage was to be found) before they reached the Pacific
Ocean. There they spent a cold, wet winter at Fort
Clatsop hoping to get a ride back home on a passing
ship. But no ships passed near their camp, forcing them
to return up the Columbia River, back through the
mountains, and down the Missouri River.
By
then the people in the United States had given them up
for dead and their return to Saint Louis in September
1806 sparked great fanfare that would be repeated where
ever Lewis and Clark traveled. The Corps went their
separate ways and many of them died young. Lewis, who
was appointed Governor of Louisiana Territory, died
mysteriously at the age of 35 while Clark lived a
productive life in Saint Louis before passing away in
1838 at the age of 68. But the effects of their journey
on the expansion of the young United States would
continue long after their deaths.
The
Oregon Trail
In
the early 1830's waves of pioneer farmers and groups of
missionaries began to journey overland to the
"Oregon Country" from the United States. The
farmers wanted cheap land where they and their families
could build a new life for themselves while the
missionaries wanted to convert the Indians from their
"pagan" lifestyle. The trail west began at a
string of frontier towns on the Missouri River known as
"jumping off places". There emigrants could
buy last minute supplies while they formed themselves
into groups called Companies and waited to "Jump
off' into the West by crossing the river on ferries at
places like Weston, Independence, St. Joe, Nebraska
City, Council Bluffs, or Bellevue. Their
paths would merge in the vicinity of Fort Kearny where
the road led west along the Platte River through
Nebraska into Wyoming. Their trail then headed into the
Rocky Mountains through Idaho and Oregon to The Dalles
on the Columbia River. Mount Hood blocked their way
overland until 1846 when Samuel Barlow built a road
around it so most of the emigrants built rafts or
ferries to float down the Columbia River. Eventually
they reached the English stronghold of Fort Vancouver
where John McLaughlin of the Hudson Bay Company was
ready to greet all travelers. Emigrants then continued
overland to Oregon City (south of present day Portland)
and they gradually established farms and settlements
throughout the Willamette Valley and into what is now
Washington.
Their
arduous journey of about 2000 miles was alternately
tedious and dangerous as hostile Indians were much less
of a threat than disease, exposure, and deadly
accidents. Their arrival in Oregon laid a strong
American claim to the Pacific Northwest and before long
the United States would stretch across the continent.
The
California Trail
California
was a sleepy northern province of Mexico before the
United States acquired it after the Mexican-American
war. It became the destination for some overlanders but
the discovery of gold by James Marshall at Sutter's Mill
in January 1848 set off a flood of emigrants suffering
from "gold fever" as places like Sacramento,
San Francisco, and Placerville boomed almost overnight.
Miners from China, Europe, Hawaii, and South America
would join those from the United States and all would
become known as '49's.
Some
of these '49's from the United States traveled by sea
either around the tip of South America or across the
Panama isthmus but many of them decided to head west by
wagon following the Oregon Trail as far as they could.
Unlike the Oregon-bound farmers, the '49's went west all
but unprepared for the journey and bought most of their
supplies at the increasingly competitive "Jump
Off" towns on the Missouri like Leavenworth or
Saint Francis where they could mail a last letter home
while eager outfitters waited to sell them as much as
possible before they crossed over the river.
The
California Trail followed the Platte River west through
Nebraska but split off from the Oregon Trail either at
Fort Bridger in southwestern Wyoming or near Soda
Springs in Idaho. The road for the '49's then headed
southwest across mountain ranges where the snow came
early and deserts where water-holes were tainted by
alkali and cholera. Finally their trail ended at the
mining areas in the Sierra Nevada Mountains or down into
the fertile Sacramento and American River Valleys.
These
'49's were mostly men in a hurry who only intended to
get rich quick before returning to their families back
East or across the Pacific. None of them ever found any
gold nuggets the size of hen's eggs though and only a
few acquired enough gold to "strike it rich".
Most of them returned home discouraged as the mining
boomtowns faded away and panning for gold was replaced
by expensive extractive methods. Others, however, stayed
in the Golden State to build the towns and cities that
would attract people from all over the world to move to
California right to the present day.
The
Mormon Trail
Religious
persecution in the United States forced groups belonging to the Latter-day Saints
("Mormon") Church to find a new home for themselves where they could
practice their beliefs in peace. As groups of non-Mormon "Gentiles"
sought to chase them out of Illinois, the Mormon's journey to the West from the
town of Nauvoo began in 1845 after the murder of their leader Joseph Smith in
1844. They traveled west across the muddy prairies of Iowa to the Missouri River
where they, with the permission of the local Indians, established numerous camps
and small villages including Kanesville which became modern Council Bluffs.
It was at Kanesville that the Mormon Church announced Brigham Young as their new
church leader.
From
their Missouri River camps like Winter Quarters,
Kanesville, or Bethlehem they followed the Platte River
west across Nebraska on the opposite side of the river
from the Oregon and California Trails. The trails
merged together at Fort Laramie in Wyoming and continued
west until the Mormon Trail headed south at Ft. Bridger,
Wyoming then on into the Valley
of the Great Salt Lake. There on
land thought to be too barren to grow crops and isolated
from any sort of civilization the Mormons would build
their city of Salt Lake surrounded by a host of
irrigated farms and villages. This frontier "Deseret"
would some day become the modern state of Utah.
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