On the 5th of June 2013 I got on my motorcycle to ride the 2000 mile long Oregon Trail, the trail thousands of Americans took about 150 years ago, on their way to the far and unknown territory of Oregon. For me, it was relatively safe and easy to ride from Independence, Missouri to Portland, Oregon, but for these people it was incredibly courageous to start this trip that would often proof to be a life changing experience.

My own trip emerged from a desire to see more of this historic trail, and to see a part of the US that has always fascinated me. I wanted to relive the trail, as close to the original as possible, and on my favorite means of transportation: a motorcycle. I also intended this to be a test; would I be able to spend a month on the road alone? Across a stretch of land that was called ‘The Great American Desert’ in those days…?

If you want to know how I did, and how I experienced this trip, you can read all about it here.

Enjoy!

It’s already been two weeks since, having reached the destination of my trip in Portland, I got on the bike and rode back to Boulder. After 1,200 miles in three hot and long days I’m back with Anne and everything that happened the past month has had a chance to settle.

If I had to summarize the trip, I would use words like ‘fantastic’, and ‘very worthwhile’; and that would be the truth. But the trip was a lot much more than that and it would be unfair if I left it at these few words.

It’s very hard to go on a journey unprejudiced. Whether you like it or not, ideas will form in your head about what you will see and find on your way, and although I did my best to suppress these ideas as much as I could, they annoyingly emerged in my head unannounced.
In my mind, I pictured myself trying in vain to fix a flat tire in the middle of the desert. Or I would imagine myself hitch-hiking, trying to get to the nearest motorcycle shop. And once I reached it, I would of course have to wait for a week in a crappy but way too expensive motel full of cockroaches for a new motorcycle part. I pictured myself stranded without gas in some desolate landscape, where I had to defend myself against rattlesnakes and other creeping scum. And in my darkest fantasy I was afraid I would be robbed of the bike and everything else, and end up stranded in a town full of rednecks, without money, phone or means of transportation.

It turned out that these thoughts were mainly fed by fear of the unknown, and it wasn’t, in any way, consistent with the truth. Gas was available almost everywhere, the people were extremely friendly and helpful, and I had no problems at all with the bike.
During the trip slowly but certainly it dawned on me that all problems eventually can be solved. This gave a comforting feeling, a certain calm, and instead of worrying of the things that might go wrong, I was able to enjoy everything around me more.

The idea for this trip originated from a desire to find the history of the hundreds of thousands emigrants that crossed the North American continent in the second half of the nineteenth century. Of course I had some preconceived ideas about this as well. It was obvious to me that I would relive in detail what these people saw and experienced, simply by traveling the same route to the West.
Unfortunately, many of the traces that I hoped to see had vanished in the course of time. The land through which I traveled is a modern land, and though it is proud of its heritage and indeed cherishes it, it’s also constantly developing itself. This has had a big impact on what’s left of the old Oregon Trail; in time trees were planted, prairie was cultivated, roads were constructed, and houses and plants were built.
One of the most typical examples of this ‘degradation’ of the trail was the grave of an emigrant, once situated on the vast and open plain, now in a field stripped bare, with an occasional yukka, unreachable because of the barbed wire fence from some ranch, and overlooking an ultramodern power plant. The land hasn’t stopped developing the past 150 years, something for which it cannot be blamed, but in many ways it didn’t improve how I experienced the history of the very same land.

The landscape may have changed in many ways by human intervention, the climate hasn’t. It can still get really hot in Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho and the eastern part of Oregon, and though the roads have improved drastically, it still is very dusty in these parts, the wind still blows as hard as ever, and never will a thunderstorm let itself be chased away by human beings. This definitely gave me a good idea of the conditions the emigrants had to travel in.

Of course the distances in this enormous country haven’t changed either, and so it happened more than once that, while I was riding at a comfortable speed of about 55 miles per hour on some very good asphalt road through the dry land, I realized that the distance I covered in one hour, was a distance the emigrants would need three days to overcome. And after riding a few hours through the summer heat, a cool store next to a gas station where I could buy just about everything I needed that day would await me, a luxury these people never had.

I expected the landscape to be more diverse, more spectacular, maybe. But how did I ever think I was able to ride impressive passes, with some really beautiful winding roads, enough to make any motorcycle rider drool, on a route where always the flattest and most accessible road was chosen? For the emigrants the going was tough enough as it was. These people weren’t interested in some spectacular tourist landscape, all they wanted on a day was to cover enough distance. A miscalculation on my side, which does not alter the fact that I saw some really beautiful things on my route.

Then there was the much feared off-road challenges I expected to face. When I was planning my route on maps and on the internet, it was hard for me to know what awaited me. You can’t see the condition of the road from above, and on a map it is impossible to see how much rain fell the previous days. Sometimes a clear warning about impassable roads was given in one of the guides I read, or they advised people to stay away from a road at a certain time of year. But generally, I was on my own in guessing the conditions of the route. It turned out that most of the gravel roads in the US are very well maintained, some better than others, and with some practice I was able to ride well on all of them. They brought me to some very beautiful places, and I have the best memories of the rugged and empty land I saw here. Only once did I work myself into trouble when a road that looked like a good road on the map, slowly changed into a sandy cow trail.
And then there was the old Barlow Road in Oregon that was in a condition not much better than how the emigrants had left it. This formed one of the more serious challenges for me. The biggest part of the road I rode without much problems, but the last stretch through the woods of Mount Hood, however, got too technical for me, and for safety reasons (alone, nobody around for miles, too heavy motorcycle, too attached to expensive equipment like computer and camera) I decided to skip it. It was a hard decision to make, and it felt a bit like defeat, but it probably was the best thing to do (or so I like to tell myself).

With the people, of whom a land eventually really consists, I had nothing but positive experiences. Numerous persons asked me where I came from, where I was going and showed genuine interest. They were impressed by my intention and my trip. They helped me when I needed something, went through a lot of trouble to give me sound advice, and sincerely wished me well and told me to be careful out there on the road. Nobody who told me I was insane, only people who admitted they didn’t dare to undertake such a trip themselves. Some of them confessed that they had always wanted to go and travel, and I always encouraged them to do so.
I think that in the spirit of the Americans in the West, quite a bit of determination of the emigrants is still left, and not much has changed in that sense for the last 150 years; a lot of people still travel the entire country, searching for a place that’s better, more beautiful or safer, whether it is for work or for pleasure. Of all the people I talked to, only one or two still lived in the town they grew up in, but these really were exceptions. It is in the genes of Americans to travel, and in many ways I think they are still a nomadic people.

All these elements made this trip for what it was: searching for and experiencing history, meeting people, facing challenges and trying to overcome them, and mostly: enjoying the beautiful things you see on the way, whether they are expected or not.

I set myself a challenge, and I succeeded in what I wanted to reach. This gives me a sense of accomplishment, and also some pride. It makes me feel stronger in what I am and more confident in reaching the next goals I set for myself.

Living without luxury or familiar company for a month makes you realize what you have, and that these things are invaluable; friends that support you in what you do, good health, but most important of all: a home to return to.

I did it, 3,671 miles on my sturdy little bike: I made it to the end of the trail.

It’s been a great experience, and although the things I did were not in any way spectacular or even ground-breaking, for me it was well worth the effort.

Thanks to everyone who helped me realize this project, and thanks for all the positive and stimulating reactions that I got along the way!

In the autumn of 1845 Sam Barlow is overseeing the small harbor in the inlet of the Chenoweth Creek, near present day The Dalles, and he looks at all the work that’s being done by the emigrants that are building rafts for their trip on the river. Wheels are removed from the wagons and placed under the wooden body, which is to become the shelter on the rafts for the rest of the trip. Most of the livestock is sold so the emigrants are able to pay the ferrymen.

Sam Barlow though, has other plans. He wants to find a road over land, south of Mount Hood, straight through the thick forest. Sam has heard enough stories of people drowning in the strong currents of the Columbia River. That’s is not going to happen to his family. Apart from that, he is outraged about the high prices the ferrymen are asking to get the emigrants to their destination.
It’s October by now, and winter is drawing near with frost and rain, not something the tired and weakened travelers are looking forward to. But they have no choice now but to move on. After a few days, the company of Joel Palmer joins Barlow’s and together they start building the road.

The two men don’t get the huge job done before winter falls. Still on route, they decide to make a cache where they will leave their belongings, and one volunteer, William Berry, is left behind to stay the winter and guard everything. The others load their most needed things on the draft animals and start off to Oregon City on foot. Next spring, Barlow and Palmer return with more men to finish the job. Berry is found in good health, their possesions are still intact, and they start building right away.

This all sounds as if the road that was built was comfortable and safe but, unfortunately for the emigrants, this was not the case. It was still very rugged and so was the terrain, with all the dangers that come with it.
The trail, because that was all it really was, hasn’t changed very much in all these years. Where in other places the Oregon Trail has been paved with tarmac, today large stretches of this road have hardly changed in 150 years’ time. And that it was a rugged road, I now know from personal experience.

In the spring and summer of 1846 the road was finished, and from the autumn of that same year, emigrants could choose whether they wanted to travel over land or by water. But if they wanted to continue their journey south of Mount Hood, they’d have to pay Sam Barlow, the man who was so outraged about the financial exploitation of the emigrants, toll to travel this road.

On the gravel road, on the steepest part of a climb, a car is coming from the opposite direction. The shining black machine slows down and comes to a stop right next to the bike. A tinted window slides open and the head of a young woman of about thirty years old appears.
‘Who are you?’ she asks in a resolute way. I’m a little perplexed by this strange question.
‘Uh…why do you want to know?’
‘Because you are on private land’
Oh shoot, here we go again. Every time I think a found a nice off road, I’m not allowed to ride it. Normally I’d see three or four ‘no trespassing’ signs (with bullet holes, to emphasize the intention) but this time I didn’t see any at all.
I apologize, and the woman helps me find an alternative. I can either go back to the highway, or take another, but a longer, route. She shows me how to find it, but I can’t see any road where she puts her finger on the map. Still, she seems very certain about it and it is obvious that she lives around here; I just got kicked off her land. It looks like she really knows what she’s saying. Besides, only a wimp would turn back to the highway.

Not long after I take this new route, there is a sign next to the road, that says; ‘WARNING – DANGER next 3.4 miles 6% down grade’. This makes me doubt my earlier decision for a moment, but I really don’t feel like riding this whole way back.

The gravel on the road down is very deep, probably because of all the trucks braking at this point. And the deep gravel is only alternated with even deeper gravel. I gear down as much as possible, but it’s not enough to slow the bike down; I have to use my brakes as well. Several times, I think I can feel the front wheel slide a little.
It’s only on the less steep parts that I have the courage to take a few pictures. And after every photo session, I hope I can kick the bike back to life again, I don’t want to get stuck in these lifeless and hot surroundings. Fortunately I’m on a pretty steep grade.

About half an hour later, I’m back on the trusted ‘blacktop’, and in the town of Biggs (population in 2010: twenty-two) I finally leave the steaming hot canyon, straight to the Columbia River. I’m trying to find ‘First View Monument’, a reminder of the fact that on this spot the emigrants saw, for the very first time, the mighty Columbia River, the river that would take them to their destination: Willamette Valley.
I ask a waitress where the monument is, but all I get is an empty stare. ‘I’ve lived here for twenty years, but I’ve never heard of such a monument!’ she exclaims. One mile down the road I find the stone marker.

East of Baker City lies the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, built right where the Oregon Trail once passed. When they reached this point, the emigrants had left the hot and dry Hells Canyon, and were slowly moving towards the Blue Mountains, a final hurdle that had to be taken before they reached the Columbia River. It must have been both a magnificent and frightening sight to see.

Today the snowy peaks of the Elkhorn Ridge still look the same as 150 years ago. From the museum, situated on a large hill, I took a picture of the ridge. The little white dot on the left is a full-size ‘prairie schooner’, a wagon like the ones the emigrants traveled in. It gives a pretty good idea about the size of this country, and how small and insignificant the people were that crossed it.

The valley through which the Powder River runs is colored green by potato, beet, onion and corn. Cows and horses feed themselves on the rich grass. Just like it must have been for the travelers to Oregon, this fertile land is a welcome change for me from the grey and brown hills covered with sagebrush.
By now, I begin to notice that I’m starting to get a little travel-weary. I’m not as surprised anymore at the things I see, and I am not as eager to have a conversation with people I meet along the way.
Just this afternoon, at a gas station, a man told me about his motorcycle crash with some huge bird of prey. It cost him a part of his arm. A thrilling story, and a few weeks ago I would have hung on his lips. Now, all I really want him to do is go. I want to ride, move on, focused only on my goal of reaching the end of the trail.

I can imagine that it must have been the same for the emigrants. By now, there was no way back, but there was still a very long way ahead, and they knew it. They were tired of traveling but had no choice but to move on.
Today, I traveled a distance in a few hours that would have taken the emigrants, in this mountainous region, about ten days. The longer I am on the road, the more admiration -or should I say wonder- I feel for the people that made this incredible journey.

Tomorrow I hope to reach the Columbia River. Nearly there.

The past few days I have followed the Snake River as closely as possible. The impressive river now calmly finds its way through Idaho and Oregon, but in the days of the trail it formed a serious barrier for the emigrants. Today the river has been dammed in many places, but halfway the nineteenth century it was a wild and dangerous waterway. Twice, the overlanders had to try to get their belongings across, once at Glenn’s Ferry, and once at the old Fort Boise, in present-day Idaho. Some decided it was better to keep following the river on the south side, but that meant traveling many miles further.

Still, following the river was no guarantee that there would always be drinking water. A lot of times the river water was far below the high plateau the emigrants crossed. That made it very hard, if not impossible, to reach the water. While traversing the hot and dry plain, with hardly enough grass for the animals, the emigrants could hear the river roar down below, unreachable for thirsty people and draft animals.

The name of the river is derived from the Indians in this area: the Shoshone, often called ‘Snake’ by the emigrants, probably because they made snake-like motions of the hands in sign language. The Shoshone, as their befriended tribe the Bannock, were very good fishermen, which the emigrants benefited from: salmon was a very welcome change of diet after months of bacon and beans.

Although the first encounters with Shoshone and Bannock were friendly, it wouldn’t take long before the relations between the Indians and the whites turned sour. In the eyes of the emigrants these people were inferior, especially when they were too poor to own horses, and consequently, they were treated disrespectfully. But they were excellent horse thieves, and more than once a surprised emigrant would count fewer horses in the morning than before he went to bed.

This photo was taken near Shoshone Falls, or Twin Falls, hardly ever visited by the emigrants because the trail wouldn’t pass here. Nevertheless, this ‘Niagara of the West’ was often mentioned in diaries; the loud roar of the falls was clearly audible on the trail, about 8 miles to the south. Not a lot of emigrants would actually hike out to see it, because going there would put you in serious risk of loosing your scalp.

Today I rode through the Fort Hall Indian Reservation, north of Soda Springs, Idaho, where the Oregon Trail used to go. I was unsure if I was allowed to ride here at all. I knew that in some reservations non-residents are not allowed to enter. Yesterday, I tried to gain some information about it at the Ranger Station in Soda Springs, but unfortunately that was closed on Sunday. Subsequently, I bothered several complete strangers about it. They were all very friendly, and they all told me that it should not be a problem. It was enough to convince me to go. Besides, I was wearing my ‘scalp-protector’, and should things really go wrong; I would also have two mirrors on my bike.

The area north of Soda Springs is very green, thanks to the Pontneuf River that runs through the wide valley. I saw grassland, flowers and numerous birds everywhere. Farmers were busy harvesting the hay, which was pressed into enormous green sugar cubes by an impressive-looking machine. Afterwards they were spat out onto the cropped meadow. Behind this ‘sugar cube-pressing machine’ dozens of gulls were flying, as if they were hovering above a fishing boat on the sea. It was a strange sight to see, on these green meadows of Idaho.

I didn’t see any Indians today, except one in a Fort Hall Indian Reservation car. It was probably some kind of tribal ranger, who keeps an eye on everything because trespassing is not allowed here.
I meant to stop and have a chat, but at that very moment, all my attention was focused on the road that had turned into what seemed to be a river bed covered with fist-sized boulders. As I passed by, the ‘ranger’ raised his hand to greet me (Indian humor?) and I returned his greeting enthusiastically, an impulsive reaction that nearly cost me dearly; the bike started swaying like a fish fresh out of the water. Better keep both hands on the handlebars, just like my mother told me.

Before the emigrants left home, they had heard and read numerous stories about these ‘bloodthirsty’ Indians, stories that were exaggerated further by the press. So imagine the surprise of travelers to Oregon and California when they discovered that the Indians they met were actually very friendly. Often they would trade: emigrants would receive animal skins, moccasins, or meat; in return they would give things like knives, needles, tobacco, blankets or clothes.

Until the eighteen-sixties there were very little skirmishes between white people and Indians. Sometimes cattle of overlanders was stolen or a group of Indians would invite themselves along a wagon train for a few days, something that might cause some irritation among the emigrants, especially since the wide robes the Indians wore could hide a lot of cutlery.
White men, however, would shoot the game the Indians had to live off and the cattle of the overlanders would graze the same grass the buffalo needed as well.
From about 1845 on, the white men would travel west by the thousands, and the Indians started to realize that their way of life was seriously threatened; the buffalo were being exterminated and the many treaties made with the Indian tribes were not respected by the whites. The Indians slowly lost their patience, something that would eventually result in the Indian Wars, when Indians tried to resist the whites on a much larger scale. And if history had turned out just a little different, I would probably have ridden through the Fort Hall Emigrant Reservation today.

To see the American wildlife, you really don’t need to leave the highway. Many victims of traffic are lying next to the road; skunks, raccoons, deer, antelope, rabbits, prairie dogs, squirrels, swallows. This morning I even saw a small lynx on the tarmac. Sometimes bones are all that remains of the victim.

In the five months on the road, there would be many deadly victims among the emigrants too. And contrary to popular belief, it weren’t the Indians that caused the most deaths. This dubious honor fell to cholera, or Asiatic Cholera, to be precise. The symptoms of this disease were diarrhoea and vomiting, and those who were infected were usually dead not long after they began to feel ill. It was possible for someone to be perfectly healthy in de morning, and buried at the end of the very same day. Bad hygiene in the popular and crowded camping spots were the causes of the rapid spread of the disease, especially in the infamous years 1849, 1850 and 1851, along the Platte River route. Here the disease made thousands of victims.

Everybody was afraid of the ‘invisible death’. Some of the sick were left behind, a note attached to their clothes, asking other travelers to give them some food and water. There are even stories of people that were buried before they were actually dead.
Not everybody was that harsh; there was al lot of compassion on the trail too. Plenty of stories exist of people that took care of or buried strangers, of the sick that were hoisted in a wagon passing by, or of orphans that were taken in by other families, supported from a ration that wasn’t all that much to start with.

Coffins weren’t available, of course. Sometimes boards of the wagon were used, in other cases the dead were just wrapped in a blanket or buffalo hide.
The deceased were usually buried right on the trail. That way, the graves were soon trampled by oxen and wagons, which reduced the chance of graves being looted by wolves or Indians. Every mile of the trail is said to contain as much as fifteen graves. The world’s longest burial ground, it is often called.

Whether it was death by cholera, or by an accident, by stampeded cattle, by drowning, or an attack from Indians, people never really got the time to process the loss of their beloved ones. They had to move on, making enough miles, making sure they had enough food every day. That was what mattered, if they wanted to arrive safely in Oregon eventually.

What a terrible disappointment it was for many of the emigrants: South Pass. This was the way to cross the Great Divide, the only passable route over the Rocky Mountains. High and spectacular mountains is what they had expected, a very narrow trail to be traveled, just wide enough for the wagons, with a ravine on one side, where far below a wild river, barely audible, was making its way over the rocky river bed.

Instead they saw a gently sloping mountain, completely covered with sagebrush. The only snowy mountains they saw were on the horizon, many miles to the north.

Not a lot has changed in the last 150 years. The pass is still very desolate, and it took me some time to find the original spot where the emigrants and their wagons had passed.
Two markers commemorate the trail here; one was placed by Ezra Meeker, who rode the trail himself in 1852 -and again in 1906 and 1910-, and one was erected for Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding, the first white women to cross the pass.
The pass was discovered by Robert Stuart, who in 1812, with six others, was on his way from the trade settlement Astoria (near Portland, Oregon) to St Louis in the east. This discovery was of vital importance for the future Oregon Trail; suddenly it was possible to cross the Rocky Mountains with wagons, something that nobody had held possible before.

Although the South Pass looks somewhat insignificant, it still is part of the great water divide of the North American continent. All the oil and gas that leaks from my bike from now on, will eventually end up in the Pacific Ocean.
The first water the emigrants saw after crossing the divide was Pacific Springs, on the bottom of the right photo. A lot of overlanders camped at this spot, for the first time in Oregon Territory. They were now halfway on their journey and for many it meant an important psychological step; there really wasn’t a way back now.

After the South Pass there were two options: the emigrants could take the Sublette Cutoff, a route that would take them west in almost a straight line and which shortened the journey by a few days, or one took the southern way, to Fort Bridger. This last route was longer, but at least it meant that there would always be water available for people and oxen, due to a number of rivers that run through this barren land.
On the Sublette Cutoff, on the other hand, the emigrants had to cross a 50 mile stretch of land, through blazing hot desert, without even a drop of water to be found on the way. A lot of lives were lost here, especially oxen’s. Many years later emigrants still remembered the stench of rotting ox carcasses along the road.

From 1859 it was possible to take a third route: the Lander Cutoff, built by the American government. This trail went north of the Sublette Cutoff, but never really got very popular.

I decide to take the route to Fort Bridger, because like the South Pass, the route along the Sublette Cutoff has changed very little the last one and a half century; it still is extremely hot and very empty.