"An overland highway to the Western sea" was the thought variously
expressed by many men in both public and private life among the
French, English, and Americans from very early times. In 1659 Pierre
Radisson and a companion, by way of the Great Lakes, Fox, and
"Ouisconsing" Rivers, discovered the "east fork" of the "Great River"
and crossed to the "west fork," up which they went into what is now
the Dakotas, only to find it going still "interminably westward."
In 1766 Carver, an Englishman, went by the same route up the "east
fork" to Saint Anthony Falls; thence he traveled to Canada, to learn
from the Assiniboin Indians the existence of the "Shining Mountains"
and that beyond them was the "Oregan," which went to the salt sea.
As early as 1783 Thomas Jefferson wrote to George Rogers Clark to tell
him he understood the English had subscribed a very large sum of
money for exploration of the country west of the Mississippi, and as
far as California. He even expressed himself as being desirous of
forming a party of Americans to make the trip.
Twenty years later, under the direction of _President_ Thomas
Jefferson, General Clark was made a member of the Lewis and Clark
Expedition, which went up the "great river" and ultimately crossed
through Montana and Idaho to the Columbia (Oregan?) and the "salt
sea."
Zebulon Pike was turned back by the imperious Rocky Mountains in 1806.
A few years later Captain Bonneville braved the plains, the plateaus,
the mountain passes, and the deserts, and saw the Columbia. Then
continuous migrations finally fixed the overland highway known from
ocean to ocean as the Oregon Trail.
The Mormons followed this national road when they trekked to the
valley of Salt Lake in 1847--a dolorous path to many.
Because the Oregon Trail was nature's way, man and commerce made it
their way. Road sites are not like city sites--made to order; they are
discovered. For that reason the pioneer railway transcontinental also
followed this trail. The Union Pacific marks with iron what so many of
the emigrants marked with their tears and their graves. From the mouth
of the Platte to the heart of the Rocky Mountains and beyond is a
continuous cemetery of nameless tombs.
The next few pages will give some sketches of fact depicting scenes of
sunlight and shadow that fell on this highway in days not so very long
agone.