In December 1845, columnist John L. O'Sullivan wrote that it was America's manifest destiny to spread across the continent, giving a name to a powerful idea in 1840s America. At that time the United States ended at mid-continent in Missouri, but many believed that the same civilization and republican democracy that had developed in the eastern states would inevitably expand west to the Pacific. That belief set in motion events that changed and redefined the ownership of half of North America and the lives of all its native inhabitants. Along the Oregon Trail, more than 400,000 emigrants went west in less than a single generation, and the idea of manifest destiny affected the lives of people across the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Photo: Barry Swackhamer

Hagerman, Idaho · USA