By Rick Steber
(Softcover)

Few know that pioneers were still traveling the Oregon Trail in covered wagons as late as the 1920s. This little-known era of history is told in the words of the pioneers themselves.

The route that become the Oregon Trail was developed by wandering mountain men following game trails and Native American trade routes. Historians recognize 1843 as the official beginning of the Oregon Trail when a group of 1,000 men, women and children, 120 wagons and 5,000 head of cattle left Missouri for Oregon's Willamette Valley. After gold was discovered in California in 1848 over 250,000 people traveled overland to the diggings while another 50,000 went to claim free farmland in Oregon.

In 1869 the transcontinental railroad was completed to California and in 1883 rail service reached the Pacific Northwest. At last emigrants could move west easily and quickly. But covered wagon pioneers continued to travel over the Oregon Trail for a variety of reasons: lack of money, a love to watch their work animals, a chance to go places where the steel rail did not reach, and, often, a sense of wanderlust.

The later-day pioneers no longer traveled in large wagons trains but in single wagons or small groups of family or friends. They were able to travel lighter because provisions and feed could be purchased at scattered ranches or in towns that had sprung up along the way. If they ran low on money they could stop and work for a few weeks.

Historians tell us the Oregon trail existed between 1843 and 1869, but wagon pioneers continued to travel over the Oregon Trail until affordable automobiles and a national highway system made the wagon obsolete in the 1920s. The LAST OF THE PIONEERS tells their story.