Summer 2012

Our grandkids are flying in again from India to spend their summer vacation with us and with their other set of grandparents. We will pick them up in San Francisco in early June. Nancy and I left home in early May to head west. The plan is to spend a week in Salt Lake City for her to work on genealogy and then to head northwest to a Roadtrek rally in Prosser, Washington. After that we work our way down the Pacific coast to California to visit relatives before picking up the grandkids.

The following webpages describe our experiences on this trip. We will add to it as the trip unfolds.

Part I - Following the Oregon Trail

Since we had about a week between Salt Lake City and the Roadtrek Rally, we decided to use it to investigate the Oregon Trail from the Wyoming - Idaho border to the Columbia River. My (Gil's) great grandmother traveled to California by wagon train in 1850, so we have a personal interest in this part of American history.

Historians estimate that between 200,000 and 350,000 people traveled by wagon train on the Oregon and California trails between 1841 and the late 1860s, when the competion of the transcontinental railroad made wagon trains obsolete. The Oregon trail left from Independence, MO, traveled northwest to the Platte River in Nebraska, followed the Platte into Wyoming, skirted to the north of the Laramie range, and crossed the continental divide at South Pass. It then headed for the Snake River in Idaho, followed the Snake to Oregon. The Oregon Trail  headed over the Blue Mountains in eastern Oregon to the Columbia. Some of the emigrants then headed down the Columbia to their intended destination in the Williamette valley. Other emigrants headed over the Cascades to the Williamette valley. Emigrants heading for California followed the same trail to south central Idaho, where the California trail turned south into Nevada and crossed the Sierra Nevada range into the Sacarmento valley.

The Oregon trail is about 2,000 miles long and required 4 to 5 months to make the trip. People left Independence in late April or early May after the trails had dried out from the spring thaw and the grass had time to green up.  The goal was to get to get across the Sierras, if going to California, or the Blue Mountains in Oregon before heavy snow closed the routes for the winter.

Southeastern Idaho
Parting of the Ways: to Oregon or to California?
Southwestern Idaho
Into Oregon