a boy and his family pushing oxen, against a backdrop of wheat

Illustration by Allan Davey; Art Phaneuf/Alamy Stock Photo (oxen); Carol Barrington/Alamy Stock Photo (Chimney Rock); Dave Neligh for Colorado Country Life magazine (wagons)

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Blazing a Trail

Students in Nebraska find out what life was like for settlers along the Oregon Trail. 

December 2, 2024
By the editors of Scholastic News

As You Read, Think About: What were some challenges people faced on the Oregon Trail?

Imagine packing up everything you own and walking nearly 2,000 miles to find a new home. Starting in 1843, tens of thousands of Americans did just that. They migrated west on a pathway that became known as the Oregon Trail.

Last spring, students at Central Elementary School in Kearney, Nebraska, got a hint of what life was like for those pioneers. Their town isn’t far from where the Oregon Trail once ran. The students decorated shopping carts to look like covered wagons and were given pioneer family names. Then they spent a full school day working in groups to push their “wagons” nearly 3 miles along their own version of the trail. 

“The Oregon Trail is a big part of our state history,” says teacher Troy Saulsbury. He’s been leading the project for his fourth-grade students for about 15 years. 

Kids on the Oregon Trail
Watch a video to learn about the Oregon Trail.

Going West

In the early 1840s, present-day Oregon, Washington, and Idaho weren’t yet part of the United States. The area was called Oregon Country. At the time, the U.S. government was eager for American settlers to head west and expand the country’s borders.

The pioneers had heard stories about Oregon Country’s rich soil, thick forests, and mild climate. To many, it seemed like a good place to build a better life. 

Many pioneers would set off from the Oregon Trail’s starting point in Missouri (see map below). They packed their supplies into covered wagons for the five-month journey. They depended on oxen and mules to pull their wagons along the trail. Because the wagons were filled with food, tools, and other supplies, there was usually little room for people. Families walked next to their wagons, traveling up to 15 miles in a day.

Jim McMahon/Mapman®

A Dangerous Trip

The Oregon Trail was actually a series of trails made by the fur traders and the Native peoples who lived there (see “Another View of the Trail”). The first section ran along the flat grasslands of the Great Plains. But from there, the route became much more treacherous.

Parts of the journey involved crossing raging rivers. The pioneers struggled to push their wagons across rivers while their animals swam across. Because few people could swim at the time, many pioneers drowned. Another threat was a deadly disease called cholera (KAH-luh-ruh), which people often got from drinking contaminated water.

The travelers faced other challenges, including a lack of food. No matter how much they packed into their wagons, it was rarely enough to keep them going during months of walking. In all, about 1 in 10 pioneers on the trail died.

Many of the pioneers who completed the trip settled in the area that became the state of Oregon in 1859. Others branched off to different places in the West. By 1869, as many as 400,000 people had traveled on the Oregon Trail. 

Courtesy of Troy Saulsbury 

Sophia Jimenez and Matthew Lemus-Lopez stand near their “wagons.” 

Pioneer Appreciation

The path that the students from Kearney followed last spring was modeled after the original Oregon Trail. For example, a rock garden in a local park was their version of the Rocky Mountains. Ten-year-old Matthew Lemus-Lopez explains that getting over the rocks required teamwork.

“The first group to go over would help the next wagon, and then it would just be like a chain,” he says.

Matthew and his classmate Sophia Jimenez say their daylong trip helped them appreciate the challenges that the pioneers faced. 

“We got firsthand experience of what it was like,” Sophia says. “I was very tired after walking the little bit that we walked!”

Another View of the Trail

The Oregon Trail passed through areas where many Native peoples had lived for thousands of years. John Washakie is the great-grandson of Chief Washakie, who led the Shoshone (shuh-SHOHN) Tribe in the late 1800s. He describes some of the ways in which pioneers on the trail affected his ancestors.

The Granger Collection

A group of Shoshone in about 1870

“The Oregon Trail crossed right through Shoshone territory in southwestern Wyoming. You had all these people coming through—hundreds of thousands of travelers. Over time, there was no game for Shoshone to eat. Bison, antelope, and deer were gone from the area. The westward travelers had been hunting them.

“The travelers brought diseases like smallpox and measles. They killed a lot of Shoshone people.

“Ultimately, the Shoshone had to move to a new area to survive. We now live on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. The Oregon Trail changed everything for us.”

1. Based on the article, why do you think Troy Saulsbury has his students re-create a journey along the Oregon Trail?

2. How do the authors support the claim that parts of the Oregon Trail were treacherous?

3. Based on the sidebar, “Another View of the Trail,” describe two ways the Oregon Trail affected the Shoshone Tribe.

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