It Happened on the Oregon Trail includes twenty-nine unusual, remarkable, little known events that happened along the trail from Independence, Missouri to Oregon's Willamette Valley. From Rufus K. Porter's brilliant plan to fly people to Oregon in hot air balloons, to the plight of a young girl who climbed Independence Rock to carve her name and was left behind by her wagon party, this book reveals the hidden stories about the trail. Many of the events along the Oregon Trail are well known—the perils of the Applegate family as they rafted down the raging Columbia River, the plight of the Donner Party as they found themselves snowbound and starving at Truckee Lake. But do you know the whole story? It Happened on the Oregon Trail includes these events as well as many lesser-known happenings, providing insight about the adventurous emigrants who, beginning in the 1840s, headed west in covered wagons in search of a better life. These stories reveal the hardships and the joys of the 2,000-mile journey as the travelers left from the “jumping-off” cities along the Missouri River to cross the plains, mountains, deserts, and rivers to reach their final destinations in Oregon and California. You’ll read about Lafayette Tate, who experienced “trail justice” for committing murder; about Catherine Hickman and David Parks, who met on the Trail and were married in a trailside wedding; and about Solomon Butcher, a frontier photographer, who captured life on the Great Plains. In an easy-to-read style that’s entertaining as well as informative, Tricia Martineau Wagner recounts some of the most captivating moments from our nation’s great westward migration. Tricia Martineau Wagner is an experienced elementary school teacher and a reading specialist. She was educated at Miami University and the University of Toledo, where she graduated with honors. She became intrigued with the westward migration of the pioneers when she flew over the Oregon Trail. She makes her home in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she lives with her husband, Mark, and their children Kelsey and Mitchell. Preface No two journeys over the Oregon Trail were the same. For some the overland trip was a carefree and scenic experience of a lifetime. Unencumbered by accident, disease, or misfortune theirs was an adventure-filled, if not a romantic affair. For others the cross-country trek was nothing short of grueling, with unexpected hardships and unbearable heartaches. They experienced intolerable extremes of weather, lacked the basic necessities of food, water, and shelter, and witnessed inconceivable human behavior. When the wagon train era began in the 1840s, thousands of courageous "emigrants" left behind the America they knew and traveled into uncharted territory across unfamiliar terrain-at times unsure of the route, much less what to expect ahead. West of the Missouri River towns was a wild frontier as foreign to them as living in a space station seems to us today. The floodtide of emigrants over westward trails began as a trickle and evolved into a tidal wave that left the Native Americans overwhelmed by the sheer volume of trespassers.Caught up in the "Oregon Fever," the emigrants were collectively driven toward fresh horizons, and thus the caravans of wagons began rolling westward. Perhaps it was the chance for a better life, free land, the hope to strike it rich, the desire to unite the land as one nation, or simply an adventuresome spirit that led them to leave behind their lives in the eastern United States. In the span of forty-five short years the United States went from being a country made up of towns mostly scattered along the Atlantic Coast to a nation that stretched from sea to shining sea. There are several myths about the settlement of the West that need to be dispelled in order to gain a clear understanding of this time in American history. The first is that the Oregon Trail was one long, continuous road. More accurately it was like a network of blood vessels that meandered westward gathering into a pulsating vein in the vicinity of Fort Kearney, Nebraska. Given to the proclivity of human nature to find a shortcut, many cutoffs were defined from the main route. The second myth involves the image of a single-file line of wagons heading toward the setting sun. In actuality an array of wagons spread out one abreast of the other to avoid the choking dust. A caravan was often miles wide, due to the natural detours caused by changes in river courses or the necessity for finding available grass and fresh campsites. Third is the misconception that men tamed the west alone with their brute strength. Largely ignored by historians is the importance that women played in settling and civilizing the wild frontier. Their strength and courage under adverse conditions saw their families through unfathomable situations. The fourth myth is that travelers over the Oregon Trail were a homogeneous group of Caucasian American citizens. The Oregon T