Ezra Meeker has done a signal service for our country in reblazing the Oregon Trail. He has accomplished an even greater work in helping to humanize our history and vitalize the geography of our land, by giving to us, through this little volume, a vivid picture of the heroic pioneering of the Farther West.
7. INDIANS AND BUFFALOES ON THE PLAINS 43
PART TWO--SETTLING IN THE NORTHWEST COUNTRY
10. GETTING A NEW START IN THE NEW LAND 69
13. MOVING FROM THE COLUMBIA TO PUGET SOUND 99
15. BLAZING THE WAY THROUGH NATCHESS PASS 115
19. THE STAMPEDE FOR THE GOLD DIGGINGS 141
20. MAKING A PERMANENT HOME IN THE WILDS 146
PART THREE--RETRACING THE OLD OREGON TRAIL
23. A PLAN FOR A MEMORIAL TO THE PIONEERS 165
26. REVIVING OLD MEMORIES OF THE TRAIL 195
WORN deep and wide by the migration of three hundred thousand people, lined by the graves of twenty thousand dead, witness of romance and tragedy, the Oregon Trail is unique in history and will always be sacred to the memories of the pioneers. Reaching the summit of the Rockies upon an evenly distributed grade of eight feet to the mile, following the watercourse of the River Platte and tributaries to within two miles of the summit of the South Pass, through the Rocky Mountain barrier, descending to the tidewaters of the Pacific, through the Valleys of the Snake and the Columbia, the route of the Oregon Trail points the way for a great National Highway from the Missouri River to Puget Sound: a roadway of greatest commercial importance, a highway of military preparedness, a route for a lasting memorial to the pioneers, thus combining utility and sentiment.
This map shows the main divisions of North America as they were when Ezra Meeker was born. The shading in the Arctic region shows how much there was still for the explorers to discover.
The Oregon Country is shown as part of the United States, although the whole region was in dispute between the United States and Great Britain. In the United States itself the settled part of the country was east of the dotted line that runs from Lake Ontario to the Gulf of Mexico. West of this line was the Indian country, with only a few forts as outposts of settlement. Several territories had been organized, but Oregon, Missouri, and Nebraska were little more than names for vast undetermined regions.