 
THE WESTERN TRAIL “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 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 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. |
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