The Oregon Trail was a 2,170-mile (3,490 km) east-west, large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail in the United States that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. It was a wagon road stretching 2,170 miles from Missouri to Oregons Willamette Valley. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of what is now the state of Kansas and nearly all of what are now the states of Nebraska and Wyoming. The western half of the trail spanned most of the current states of Idaho and Oregon. The Oregon Trail was laid by fur traders and trappers from about 1811 to 1840 and was only passable on foot or horseback. By 1836, when the first migrant wagon train was organized in Independence, Missouri, a wagon trail had been cleared to Fort Hall, Idaho. Wagon trails were cleared increasingly farther west and eventually reached the Willamette Valley in Oregon, at which point what came to be called the Oregon Trail was complete, even as almost annual improvements were made in the form of bridges, cutoffs, ferries, and roads, which made the trip faster and safer.
The Oregon Trail was one of two main routes to the Far West. The other was the Santa Fe Trail, which led to New Mexico. Unlike a modern highway, the Oregon Trail was not a single clear path. In places, it was 10 miles (16 kilometers) wide. There were also many shortcuts and side paths. Some people who used the trail were bound for Utah or California, not Oregon. The land the Oregon Trail ran through was the home of many Indigenous tribes. These included the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Oceti Sakowin (Sioux), Shoshone, Crow (Apsáalooke), Cayuse, Walla Walla, and Umatilla. In the beginning, most groups allowed the wagon trains to move through their territory without a problem. Sometimes they traded with the settlers. But there were some violent conflicts. Historical studies suggest that about 360 settlers and about 420 Natives were killed.
The Oregon Trail was first written about by an American historian in 1849, while it was in active use by migrants, and it subsequently was the subject of thousands of books, articles, movies, plays, poems, and songs. The National Park Service declared the Oregon Trail a National Historic Trail in 1981, partly in anticipation of the trail’s sesquicentennial. Today, tourists can see evidence of the trail in wagon ruts preserved on the landscape in many locations.
