What It Was Like to Be On the Oregon Trail

You may have experienced it through the lens of the old game, but chances are you have no idea what everyday life was really like on the Oregon Trail. Packing up your entire life to face a 2,000 mile stretch of death, disease, and danger. Life on the Oregon Trail was actually a lot more exciting, and at the same time, a lot more boring than you'd probably ever think. Today we're exploring what life was really like on the Oregon Trail. The Oregon Trail was 2,170 miles of danger and boredom that stretched from Missouri to Oregon. To say daily life on the Oregon Trail was difficult is a vast understatement. It was hard work and required uprooting your entire family and deciding to venture west for new opportunities. But that didn't stop thousands of people from hopping onto their wagons and emigrating into the vast unknown. Maybe it was a chance to start over. Maybe it was the thrill of adventure. Maybe it was moving away from their annoying neighbor. Hello, Newman. Or maybe it was the promise of a parcel of land double the size of Disneyland. Whatever the reason, people traveling the Oregon Trail had a goal in mind, to make the journey and not to die while doing it. The Homestead Act, signed into law by Abe Lincoln himself in 1862, was also a big motivator. The act said people could claim 160 acres of land if they promised to grow crops on it. Not a bad deal, especially if you consider the fact that it made it easier for single, widowed, and divorced women to claim land in their own names. You go, girl. But what was it really like? Well, let's set the hypothetical scene. It's the mid-19th century. Your current town on the East Coast is overcrowded, and you're sick of living like a sardine in a pretty unhygienic sardine can. Maybe your friend Jebediah won't stop talking your ear off about wolf pelts, and you start to think, hey, maybe this West thing is the best thing. And hey, a football stadium's worth of land in exchange for growing a few crops? Ha ha ha, what could go wrong? Turns out, a lot can go wrong, especially when you're traveling thousands of miles without modern medicine and infrastructure. And when we say go wrong, we mean death. Death, death, death, and death. Everywhere you look, death. Whomever said nature was the best medicine clearly never tried to survive outside with just a flimsy wagon to protect them. If you died crossing the Oregon Trail, nine times out of 10, it was from some sort of disease and serious illness. Smallpox, flu, measles, mumps, and tuberculosis could jump through an entire wagon camp faster than you can say yee-haw, and those pioneers could do little to prevent it. One of the most dreaded illnesses you could catch was cholera. It could infect someone at breakfast, and then by the time lunch rolled around, they'd be dead. Cholera, that'll ruin an appetite. If you've ever moved anywhere, you know the nightmare that goes along with deciding what to pack up, donate, or toss. Now, multiply that nightmare by 1,000. If you were an Oregon Trail pioneer, you'd have to pack insanely light. Typical wagons could carry 2,000 pounds, which sounds like a lot. But when you consider the fact that 1,800 pounds of that was food, you'd have to reckon with the sad reality of ditching your favorite beat-up Lazy Boy, or whatever else the 1800s equivalent was at the time. Oregon Trail wagons were packed mostly with food and essentials. And let's just say the grocery list was not exactly a gourmet situation. Pioneers brought along flour, crackers, bacon, sugar, coffee, tea, and beans. They packed light when it came to kitchen supplies, clothes, and other items. And they did it all without the help of organizing guru Marie Kondo. Impressive. Along the way, any animals they brought would likely start getting tired or hurt. And sometimes they'd become food as a result. If you were traveling along the Oregon Trail and something broke, you couldn't store it until you got the chance to repair it. Lightening the load was a constant issue. So pioneers would ditch their broken supplies on the side of the road to save weight. Litter bugs. And hey, if you don't like the idea of seeing trash on the road, you're definitely not going to like this. Human bodies and trash were treated the same among the Oregon Trail pioneers, which is to say they were ditched hastily on the side of the road. When you factor in a much lower life expectancy and lack of medical care, death was just a fact of life when it came to crossing the Oregon Trail. Everywhere they looked, darkness waited. People died from disease, crossing rivers, horses bucking riders, and or getting crushed by a wagon wheel. Gun deaths were also pretty common on the trail. Other causes of a trail rider's demise included lightning storms, grass fires, hailstorms, snake bites, gunpowder explosions, suicide, and pioneer on pioneer violence. If you passed on to the Great Buffalo bullpen in the sky, the remaining pioneers would bury your body directly onto the trail so animals and wagons could roll right over it. This would help ease the scent if any wolves were looking for a quick snack. Bodies became literal speed bumps on the road. Rest in peace became rest in peace on the trail. If you're hung up on the stereotypes that Native Americans posed a huge threat to the pioneers crossing the Oregon Trail, think again. As pioneers were passing through and settling on land, Native Americans were, more often than not, kind, friendly, and even traded with land-hungry pioneers for goods and food. In the mid-19th century, traveling across the country wasn't as easy as hopping on a Boeing 747 and chomping down on the pretzels for a few hours. Back then, the 2,170 miles from Missouri to Oregon and California would take between four and six months to complete. Talk about a long, boring road trip. Couldn't even listen to podcasts. Wealthier pioneers could avoid the bumpy road trip by springing for expensive passage on a ship. But that took a full year, and it meant they'd miss all the wonders of the American plains. But still, some people opted for a year of seasickness. There was absolutely a right and a wrong time of year to travel the Oregon Trail. Like traveling to Arizona in the middle of July, there were just certain seasons which made the journey uninhabitable. Except instead of suffering a mighty sunburn by the hotel pool, the consequence for traveling the trail at the wrong time meant certain death. Pioneers left too early in the year, the oxen would starve to death because the grass along the route hadn't grown enough. Without oxen and cattle, pioneers were screwed. If they left too late in the year, travelers might get stuck in the brutally cold winter and have to deal with frostbite and freezing to death. And if pioneers got stranded, they couldn't exactly call an Uber to take them home. And even if Uber existed, the surcharges would have been way too high. Close your eyes and picture a pioneer traveling across the country in a wagon. Is it a boat-shaped Conestoga wagon with sweeping canopies and a huge cargo area? Good. Now erase that image from your head because it's wrong. Big, bulky wagons were poorly suited for functioning on the rugged terrain of the Oregon Trail. Instead, most pioneers opted for smaller wagons known as prairie schooners. Their smaller design made for a notoriously bumpy ride, which is why most people preferred to walk next to the wagon instead. Probably a good idea considering they didn't come with vomit bags. Keeping your mental health intact during a 2,000 mile walk across a bleak and deadly landscape accompanied by the same small group of friends and family was no easy task. And sadly for many people, it was straight up impossible. One darkly tragic tale of the trail happened to a woman named Elizabeth Markham. While traveling with her family along the eerily named Snake River, she announced that she wasn't going any further. No amount of coaxing could get her to join the group, so her husband was forced to take the wagons and children and abandon her. Her husband did eventually send their son back to get her, but that maybe wasn't the best idea he'd ever had. Eventually, Elizabeth returned to the family and promptly informed them that she had killed her son by clubbing him to death. Yikes. Her husband raced back to retrieve the son and found him clinging to life. Upon their return, they found that Markham had set fire to one of their wagons. As time went on, the trend of packing up your belongings and heading out west caught on like wildfire. If you were an in-the-know early trendsetter of 1841, you'd leave in a group of 70 for the Oregon Trail. In 1843, however, things really exploded. A group of over 1,000 people left from the Midwest as the cross-country exhibition gained popularity. And in 1845, the number jumped up to 3,000, making it America's hottest new trend, right up there alongside bonnets and the Mexican-American War. The Oregon Trail pioneers may have left almost 200 years ago, but that doesn't mean they don't share the same bored habits that we do today. They killed time by doing one of America's favorite pastimes, doodling. A lot of pioneers painted messages on their wagons, and many took part in the tradition of carving their names, the date, and their hometowns on some of the gigantic stones they passed. They basically treated our natural resources like a high school bathroom wall. One rock pioneers especially loved was Independence Rock in Wyoming, a massive 128-foot-tall slab. It was nicknamed the Register of the Desert. And over the years, thousands of travelers left their marks on the gigantic rock. Graffiti taggers would be proud. To say daily life on the Oregon Trail was difficult is a vast understatement. Life on the Oregon Trail was brutal. And for many, many people, it ended in death. If you could survive walking 2,000 miles in their disease-battling, resource-scrounging shoes, then you'd probably make a pretty good road trip, buddy, today.