The Oregon Trail examines the overland migration route used by hundreds of thousands of settlers travelling west during the nineteenth century. It follows the preparation, wagon organisation, river crossings, disease and difficult decisions that shaped the journey from the Missouri frontier.
The book distinguishes common experience from later pioneer mythology and considers the varied motives and outcomes of migrants. It also addresses the trail’s impact on Native homelands, epidemic disease and the expansionist policies that turned movement into permanent dispossession and settlement.
