Oregon Trail Research Paper

Words: 1244
Pages: 5

The Oregon trail was maybe not the most reliable path in the 1800s to take to get to the west. In the mid to late 1800s, people would try to make their way to the west. Some would want to move to the west for the reason of wanting to get some of the riches that can be claimed in the west and another reason was going to new land to start a new life which was in the west. There would be multiple trails at the time that would allow them to make a go west, one of them being the Oregon trail. The Oregon Trail, is a well-known trail that was first explored by Meriweather Lewis and Williams Claek who were tasked by Thomas Jefferson to export westwards to connect the east to the west. The journey for the two started in Independence, Missouri, and the …show more content…
There are tails at the time that in the 1800s connected the east to the west. Some of the trails are long trails like Oregon Trail and others are short trails that connect with other trails to reach the west side. We have the California trail that starts in the same place as the Oregon trail but instead of having the destination of Oregon it ends in Northern California. There is also the Santa Fe trail and Old Spanish trail, which the two connect at Santa Fe, New Mexico to get to southern California. Then we have the Butterfield Overland mail trail that goes along the bottom of the border and then goes along the west. Like the Oregon trail, all of these trails go through different areas so people would want to go on these trails because they saw it as the most reliable. However, the amount of people who survived going on the trail, the time it would take on the trail, the condition the people would be in while on the trail, and if raiders targeted people while they traveled on it, made a trail dependable in the 1800s. There are many people that went on these trails and sadly a handful of these people died can show how safe a trail is and this can help prove that the Oregon trail was dependable to