Oregon Trail

Oregon Trail, pioneer wagon route between Independence, Mo., on the Missouri River, and the Columbia River region of the Pacific Northwest. The 2,000-mi (3,200-km) trail was most popular in the 1840s, before the beginning of the California gold rush. In that decade at least 10,000 pioneers made the arduous trek from northeast Kansas along the Platte River in Nebraska, to Fort Laramie, Wyo. From there they crossed the Rocky Mountains at South Pass and proceeded through Snake River country to Fort Vancouver. The journey was recounted in Francis Parkman's classic, The Oregon Trail (1849).

See also: Westward movement.