One Continual Stream

In 1846, mountain man James Cayman wrote of “one continual stream of honest looking open harted people going west” as he watched pioneers heading west. Between 1841 and 1869, nearly 300,000 farmers, merchants, miners, and adventurers left friends and relatives behind and began the daunting 2,000-mile Oregon/California Trail to the fertile farmland of Oregon’s Willamette Valley or to California’s warmth and gold, while others traveled to Utah to join new Mormon settlements in the Salt Lake Valley. Many in the United States believed Americans were obliged to expand the young country from sea to sea as part of Manifest Destiny. Interest in the West had grown after the Lewis and Clark Expedition to the Pacific Northwest from 1804 to 1806 returned with tales of fertile land, bountiful water, and open spaces, and later fur trappers, traders, mountain men, and explorers confirmed those stories. These accounts attracted farmers and business people struggling to make a living during the Panic of 1837 and later the Civil War. With little awareness of the trials ahead, thousands of men, women, and children abandoned all they knew and headed westward on the Oregon/California Trail in hand-pulled carts and small covered wagons drawn by horses or oxen, carrying furniture, supplies, food, and family treasures; many never saw their relatives again, and many died before completing the journey.

Idaho · United States