Oregon Trail Essay

My life as a female pioneer taking the journey down the Oregon Trail was one of hardship and adventure. During the early 1800s settlers began to explore new territory in the New World looking for new opportunities. Through the pioneer journeys of Lewis and Clark a route through America was discovered that would take settlers to new land in the Pacific Northwest portion of the country. To reach the new land pioneers, such as I, had to travel down what became known as the Oregon Trail.

In the mid-1800s, many Americans began to move westward, with a variety of motivations. Farmers were drawn west by all of the fertile, open land in the west, offered to them cheap by the Homestead Act. The California Gold Rush was another reason many moved west. Gold was discovered in California, and miners flocked there, hoping to strike it rich. Additionally, cattle ranchers were attracted to the west because their beef cattle thrived on the abundant grasses and open range of the Great Plains. Later on, newly built railroads, including the first transcontinental railroad, made transportation of people and goods west much more feasible, and opened the West to rapid settlement (History Alive). Although Westward Expansion was a time of full

The U.S. government encouraged westward expansion through the Louisiana Purchase and the Homestead Act. President Thomas Jefferson acted on the Louisiana Purchase, after buying the land from France for millions of dollars, he also believed in the idea of moving west and thought of it as a

Though Oregon had given away all its free land by 1855, more would still continue to migrate to California and Oregon for many years. Hundreds and thousands traveled the Oregon Trail, and though approximately one in ten died from illness and accident, many more remained to settle and farm the land. They believed it was their divine right to do so. Today, some historic land marks and wagon ruts remain as monuments to the Oregon Trail. Many of the brave and bold from the east traveled its path, with ambition and hope in their hearts. Many would never see the lands they wanted to settle in.

The Oregon Trail was a very important aspect in the history of our country’s development. When Marcus and Narcissa Whitman made the first trip along the Oregon Trail, many Americans saw a window of opportunity. The Oregon Trail was the only practical way to pass through the Rockies. Pioneers crammed themselves into small wagons to try to make it to the unsettled land; however, 10% of these pioneers died on the way due to disease and accidents.

Since the turn of the nineteenth century, Western territorial expansion started to increase a sense of sectionalism throughout America. President Jefferson obtained the Louisiana purchase from Napoleon in 1803, gaining unfamiliar territory West of the Mississippi

land of the United States of America. Western expansion was a great part of the growth of the

The Westward Expansion started prior to The Revolutionary War, settlers were migrating westward to what states are now modern day Kentucky and Tennessee in hopes for a fruitful life and larger job opportunity. This Westward Expansion was aided through the Louisiana purchase in 1803, in which the United States purchased territory from France, resulting in doubling in size of the country. This Louisiana purchase was stretched from the Mississippi River to the eastern Rocky Mountains in the west and from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to the south of the Canadian border in the north. In result of the Westward Expansion , families would pick up and walk as far west as

To others Americas manifest destiny was s looked west for economic gain. The land westward-represented wealth, income, self-sufficiency, and freedom. No one really knew what laid west to them, but many of these people were very adventurerous and took the journey west. By the 1840’s expansion westward was at its’ highest. Many Americans traveled the Santa Fe Trail or the Oregon Trail. Many merchant-traders who took manufactured good from Santa Fe to

In the late 19th century, the American people began to go west. Americans began to pour into the West because of rapid population growth and affordable land (Importance of the West). They were also promised wide open land and to be free of Indians (Importance of the West). The West was in fact not free of Indians, and there were several wars that ensued in Arkansas, Montana, Washington, and California (Youngs).

Exploration has always been a central theme in the development of the United States. The Louisiana Purchase, in 1803, made the government more eager to expand west. The newly acquired lands were in need of exploration. A team needed to be established to survey and document the new territory. The Lewis and Clark expedition would answer the unknown questions of the west. The expedition would not have been successful without the leadership, determination, discipline of the Corps of Discovery, and the cooperation of the Native Americans. President Jefferson wanted the leader to have the same passion and intensity toward the discovery of the west as he possessed. Jefferson hand-

The Appalachian Trail was also the product of a daydream atop Stratton Mountain, the brainchild of Benton MacKaye. MacKaye was an off-and-on federal employee, educated as a forester and self-trained as a planner, who proposed it as the connecting thread of "a project in regional planning." His proposal, drawing on years of talk of a "master trail" within New England hiking circles, was written at the urging of concerned friends in the months after his suffragette-leader wife killed herself. It appeared in the October 1921 edition of the Journal of the American Institute of Architects, at the time a major organ the regional-planning movement. MacKaye envisioned a trail along the ridge-crests of the Appalachian

With the discovery of the New World came a whole lot of new problems. Native American Indians lived in peace and harmony until European explorers interrupted that bliss with the quest for money and power. The European explorers brought with them more people. These people and their descendants starting pushing the natives out of their homes, out of their land, far before the 1800s. However, in the 1800s, the driving force behind the removal of the natives intensified. Thousands of indians during this time were moved along the trail known as Nunna dual Tsung, meaning “The Trail Where They Cried” (“Cherokee Trail of Tears”). The Trail of Tears was not only unjust and unconstitutional, but it also left many indians sick, heartbroken, and dead.

After the War of 1812 much of America's attention turned to exploration and settlement of its territory to the West, which had been greatly enlarged by the Louisiana Purchase.

The first three major eras of the Pacific Northwest show some remarkable changes. What begins with the first people rapidly becomes a barrage of settlers, development and the harvesting of resources. Each period of time in the PNW brings changes in the people, the geography, and the culture.