REBIRTH OF THE TRAIL

More from David Dary’s: The Oregon Trail; An American Saga Copyright 2004 First Edition Published by Alfred A. Knopf http://www.aaknopf.com/ small arm of Random House, Inc., New York.

Chapter Seventeen - - - Words copied from:
Page 310-311, & 319-321

History is not a remote Olympian bar of judgment, but a controversial arena in which each generation must make its own estimates of the past. Allan Nevins.

As the twentieth Century Began, Francis Parkman’s book on the Oregon Trail was reprinted by a New York publisher, but few people paid attention. It was a new century, and transportation by the transcontinental railroad and the automobile were over shadowing the past, including the struggles and hardships endured by those who had traveled overland by wagon over the Oregon Trail. Such things had become old-timer history. The romance and adventure of the Old West were still alive in novels like Owen Wister’s The Virginian (1902) and in wild west shows, but the real West was changing. Much of the area had been settled, and new towns and cities dotted the western landscape. The railroads had already brought eastern big business west, and with it came corruption, including boss rule in many areas.

After timber reserves in the Great Lakes region were nearly depleted, loggers targeted the deep forests of Oregon, and as the twentieth century began, it became the nation’s third-ranking lumber-producing state. But then progressives in Oregon overthrew the timber barons’ rule and gained the adoption of a series of reform measures, including the initiative, the referendum, recall, and the direct primary.

The initiative enabled citizens to propose legislation: the referendum allowed them to vote for or against laws already passed by state lawmakers; recall permitted them to oust corrupt officials; and the direct primary (a reform measure first enacted by the Wisconsin legislature in 1903) bypassed party machinery and enabled the voters to choose their party candidates at the polls.

Collectively these reforms became known as the Oregon System and were widely adopted in many other areas of the nation to increase popular control of local and state governments.

* There is always more …. Let’s take a look at what I was going to end with, first …. A quote from something that Ezra Meeker wrote. Meeker, who on January 29th 1906, left his home in Puyallup, Washington to retrace the Oregon Trail with his ”prairie schooner” which incorporated parts from two other wagons that had also traversed the Oregon Trail in 1852. He ultimately wound up in Washington D.C. championing his cause which did in fact generate a bill for appropriations in the amount of $50,000 from a committee in Congress, to mark the Oregon Trail. *

“The difference between a civilized and an untutored people is in the application of experiences. The civilized man builds upon the foundation of the past, with hope and ambition for the future. The savage has neither past nor aspiration for the future. To keep the flame of patriotism alive, we must keep the memory of the past vividly before us. It was with these thoughts in mind that the expedition to mark the Old Oregon Trail
was undertaken.”

Although most Americans living between Oregon and the Atlantic coast were too involved in the problems of the present to pay much attention to the past, especially the old Oregon Trail over which so many emigrants had passed to settle the West, not everyone had forgotten. Ezra Meeker, born in Butler County, Ohio, in 1830, had traveled the road to Oregon in the 1852 with other emigrants. After an unsuccessful mercantile business in the town of Steilacoom, Meeker settled in the Puyallup Valley, where he founded the town of Puyallup in 1877, located a few miles southeast of modern Tacoma.

There he realized the fertile soil could grow abundant crops. He planted hops, used to give the bitter flavor to malt liquors, and by 1885 was wealthy and known as the “Hop King of the World.” His business took him to Europe, where in London he met Queen Victoria. Everything was fine until 1891 when an infestation of hop aphids decimated his crops. He lost a fortune but managed to keep his home in Puyallup. Soon he dabbled in other enterprises and made four trips to the Klondike in search of gold. He found little.

Back in Puyallup, he began writing a romance novel about coming west, in which he expressed his sympathy for the plight of the Indians. He also expressed sympathy for Chinese emigrants who were treated as outcasts in the Pacific Northwest. By 1900 he realized that too many Americans had forgotten the Oregon Trail. Meeker, then sevnty-seven, decided to memorialize the road by retracing the route he had taken in 1852 and marking it.

More from David Dary’s: “The Oregon Trail; An American Saga” Copyright 2004 First Edition Published by Alfred A. Knopf http://www.aaknopf.com/ small arm of Random House, Inc., New York.

Chapter Seventeen - - - Words copied from Page 310-311, & 319-321

THE H. O. R. N.

"At 5am the Horn should be blown and every man then arise and pray, attend to their cattle, and have everything done, in order that all may start by seven o'clock. That each extra man should travel on the off side [left] of his team, with his gun loaded over his Shoulder; that each driver shall have his gun so placed that he can lay his hand on it in a moments; that every gun shall have a piece of leather over the nipple, or in the pan of his gun, having their caps and Powder Flasks ready for a moment's warning. The brethren will halt for an hour to have dinner [midday meal] which must be ready cooked. When the Camp comes to halt for the night, the front of every Wagon shall be outward where the fires shall be built; the horses to be secured inside the circle.

At 1/2 past 8 the Horn will be blown when every man must retire to their wagons and pray, and be i n bed by 9'oclock, except the night guard; all fires to be put out at bed time. All the Camp to travel in close order."

More words from: "The Oregon Trail" 'An American Saga' David Dary; Page 170

Now these were the words from the journal of Thomas Bullock, a Mormon, who joined the chruch in 1841. These words are found in Bullock's journal, however, the above routine for travel was established by Bringham Young.

"Will Bagley, who edited Bullock's diary for publication, relates that the Mormons in the party started each day with coffee, and later, as some of the Mormons returned east, Young would distribute a canteen of spirits among the brethren. Neither is a modern LDS practice, but in the introduction to his book, "The Pioneer Camp of the Saints," Bagley wrote: "The 1833 revelation in the Doctrine and Covenants, Section 89 called the Word of Wisdom, which proscribes hot drinks, tobacco, and alcohol, 'was given as counsel or advice rather than as a binding commandment' and until the early twentieth century observance of this scripture was 'sporadic' among Latter-day-Saints.

More words from: "The Oregon Trail" 'An American Saga' David Dary; Page 170