'A Nation in Transit' on the Oregon Trail
In the May 1910 issue of The Atlantic, Charles M. Harvey described a thrilling scene from 173 years ago today:
A rifle-reveille from the sentinels at four o’clock in the morning on June 1, 1843, awoke the camps on the Kaw [River near Westport, Missouri], and the bustle of preparation for the march [to Oregon] began. Fires were lit, breakfast cooked and eaten, the cattle and horses at the outskirts collected, and the oxen yoked.
At seven o’clock the bugle sounded the advance, the various divisions filed into the positions which had been assigned to them, and the column, stretching itself to several miles in length, broke away from Westport and the Missouri, and headed for the sunset. ...
Men, women, and children were there, to the number of nearly a thousand, with two hundred wagons drawn by oxen. With them were several thousand horses and cattle, and also household furniture, ploughs, and seeds. It was the kind of army that never retreats. It was a nation in transit.
If you grow up in Oregon, as I did, you can’t escape the romance of the Oregon Trail. It’s an origin story as powerful as that of Paul Revere or Alexander Hamilton, the kind of deeply American dream of work and reward that promises if you’ve made it this far, you deserve to be here.
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Museums and landmarks across the state feature recreated wagons covered in canvas, and small towns have tourist strips decked out in frontier fonts. At my elementary school in Portland, we went to Oregon Trail camp and made “pioneer crafts,” coloring quilt patterns and shaking cream into butter in baby-food jars. From first to fourth grade I checked out every pioneer story the school library had to offer, wrote book reports with the plot summary “endured many hardships on the prairie,” and learned early how to spell “perseverance.” At recess, where other kids might play house, we played covered wagons.
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This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
