Exploring the Oregon, Mormon, California and Lewis & Clark Trails
Believe it or not, “The Oregon Trail” is just five years shy of its 50th anniversary. The educational video game that taught a generation of kids the cold hard realities of fate — “You have died of dysentery. Game over.” — was originally developed way back in 1971 by a senior at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.
But the REAL trail, of course, is much older — about 150 years older. Fur trappers and traders first blazed the trail from the Missouri River to eastern Oregon’s lush Willamette Valley in the 1810s. They led the way on foot and horseback before pioneer wagon trains beat a broader path starting from Independence, Missouri, in the 1830s.
Over the next decades, an estimated 400,000 settlers used the trail system, especially in the 1850s and ’60s, until the first Transcontinental Railroad blasted through the Rockies in 1869. Even so, it took years for the rail system to fully develop, enabling people and cargo to zip more easily between the Midwest and the Pacific Northwest. Today’s interstate highways 80 and 84 follow parts of the original Oregon Trail.
Turns out, Interstate 80 also delivers thousands of travelers each year to the Western Historic Trails Center to learn about the trails that literally carved a path through the history of American expansion. The Omaha and Council Bluffs area was a hub for not only the Oregon Trail, but the Mormon Trail (1846–1868), the California Trail (1810s-1860s), and the legendary expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (1804–1806).
The center features an array of exhibits, maps, films and year-round events to tell the stories of those gutsy early Americans who packed up their belongings and hit the road — before there was much of a road at all. And the place is still a center for exploration: The museum is located on a network of recreation trails along the banks of the Missouri River, making it a popular destination for bikers, runners, walkers and naturalists.
The Western Historic Trails Center is one of eight State Historic Sites owned and operated by the State Historical Society of Iowa.
