Ludington: Appreciating the Old West pioneers and their long journey
“Wagons, ho!”
In 1957 Ward Bond set television’s “Wagon Train” on course for California, sparking my interest in Old West pioneers. Little did I know that I would retrace those wagon trails in my own life.
Fast forward to 2022, eight miles west of Elko, Nev. Jim and I stopped at the California Trails Interpretive Center to learn answers to the question I’ve been asking myself on every 1,000-mile-plus trip to the West Coast since 2007 — “How did they do it?”
The interpretive center answers those questions with maps, life-sized dioramas, actual remnants of the trail still visible nearly 200 years later and quotes from letters and journals of some of the 250,000 who made the trek from 1840 to 1869.
The migrants “jumping off” from Independence and St. Joseph, Mo., had little knowledge of what lay ahead. John Bidwell wrote in 1841, “We were ready to start, but no one knew where to go, not even the captain.” His party waited for a group with an experienced guide.
As traffic on the trail increased, especially after the California gold discovery in 1848, the tens of thousands of migrants left their own trail markers — broken-down wagons, items too heavy to carry, carcasses of dead livestock and of slaughtered bison killed because they impeded travel.
And they left graves, an estimated 30,000. Elmon S. Camp wrote that a cholera outbreak during the 1849 migration left so many graves the migrants could rely on them to mark the trail for hundreds of miles.
The journey to Sacramento that takes Jim and me four or five days with overnight stops traveling at 70-80 mph took four or five months before the railroads. Humans and animals walked at 2 mph. Danger accompanied the journey. Severe thunderstorms, stampedes, accidents with cheaply made firearms — there were so many ways to die.
Despite the Hollywood version, Native Americans largely left migrants unmolested and gladly traded with them until the uninvited guests destroyed the food supply for wild game, and the game itself, bringing starvation to tribal lands.
Why did the pioneers do it? To find gold, to breathe cleaner air and drink cleaner water, to escape from yellow fever and malaria, to cure tuberculosis (consumption), to find opportunity after a depression in the 1830s.
They saw what migrants have always seen in this country — hope — and were willing to bet their lives on it.
Margaret Ludington has lived in Altoona since 1971. She is a retired staff writer and editorial writer for the Herald-Index. Margaret is a mother of two, grandmother of four. She and her husband travel frequently and have visited every state except Alaska and five Canadian provinces.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Ludington: Appreciating the Old West pioneers and their long journey
