Our discovery of the Oregon Trail started at the End of the Trail in Oregon City, Oregon.

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It was about 1843 when the great migration began moving west on the Oregon Trail. People traveled on horseback or walked the trail alongside their wagons. The Pony Express delivered mail from 1860 to 1861. The progress along the trail continued for about 25 years before the transcontinental railroad finally connected the country in 1869. We were a developing country, and we were still developing all of our boundaries and borders!

The Oregon Trail is a story that includes the Native Americans, the emigrants moving from the States in the east to the opportunities in the west. There were immigrants coming over from Europe, avoiding a famine, hard economic times, and looking for new opportunities and religious freedoms. It’s a story of our government, the military, and agreements and treaties.

With the passing of time, we are able to see the tales of fur trappers and traders, explorers, and missionaries with a new understanding. Man was meant to explore and develop new lands, and we felt that it was our right to build America from sea to shining sea. We were a country built upon democracy from the beginning, and not from our ethnic background based upon our DNA. America was the land of opportunity and the melting pot for the world.

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