Oregon Trail - August 16

I have spent much of today learning about the Oregon trail, both by visiting a great museum/interactive learning facility called the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center, and then, using one of their wonderful (and free) National Park System guidebooks, following the trail over dirt roads and back country from Casper to Independence Rock (about 50 miles). For most of the back country ride, I saw no other cars and no other people. Only occasional cows amid the sagebrush.

Here's what I learned: the Oregon trail, the California trail, and the Mormon trail were in fact one trail through most of Wyoming. All three of them, though having separate endpoints, converged  near Casper (which of course did not exist in the 1840's and 1850's) to cross the North Platte River. The river looks quite tame now, thanks to five dams that have been built. Then it was quite wide, and the crossing was treacherous. It became easier after Brigham Young left a few Mormons  behind to start a ferry service. Truly. And that was quite successful. 

Almost a half million  people made the journey across these trails - all of them through what became Casper - beginning in the 1840's and ending only when the transcontinental railroad was finished in 1869. After bumping along the dirt road for a couple of hours, I could only imagine what it was like to walk, or ride in a wagon, or pull a cart, for four months.

This transcontinental  manifest destiny is a storied part of American history. What is not so well known is the establishment of forts all along the  trail to protect the travelers from Indians (better to say native Americans, or Shoshone, or Arapaho or Sioux ), who either do not appear in the story at all, or appear as threats to the pioneers. But the story of the continuing infringement upon already-constricted native land is rarely told or known, and neither is the fact (I learned today) that of the 450,000 pioneers, only 350 were killed en route. Far more, vastly more, died of cholera or from the strains of the journey. The result of the Westward expansion, however, was the  near destruction of native American livelihood.

And so the question  arises again: Who defines progress, and who pays the  price  for it?