December 22, 2015

Oregon Trail Ancestry: Did Your Ancestors Travel the Trail?


The Oregon trail is popular in the historical lore of the United States. It is a 2,200 mile trail that led pioneers across the North American continent to the West Coast. Fur traders, explorers, gold miners, and pioneer families all used and helped develop the trail over a period of several decades in the mid 19th-century. The “jumping off point” of the trail, which was considered its beginning, was just outside of St Louis, Missouri, on the other side of the Mississippi River, through the trail didn’t start to become an obvious well-traveled road until Kansas. The Oregon Trail led travelers through what are now Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Idaho, and into Oregon.