Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Caxton Press Blazing a Wagon Trail to Oregon is the story of a determined group of American pioneers who set out to move their families on wheeled vehicles from the settled frontier in Missouri to the far Pacific shore. Their incentive was simple enough. Times were tough in 1843, and they had heard of a lush new land existing in a place called Oregon, a land ready to be settled by hard-working farmers. Although a new life seemed to await them just over the horizon, none of them suspected how formidable that horizon really was. Diaries, letters home, and later reminiscences tell their stories and document their emotional responses to their experiences. Beginning with the earliest assembly of wagons outside the frontier town of Independence, Missouri, the reader follows "this grand adventure" to its conclusion six months later in Oregon. By introducing the various participants through a weekly chronicle, the author enables readers to view these shared experiences from sometimes revealingly different angles of vision. In effect, readers themselves become vicarious members of the train.

The story of America’s westward migration is a powerful blend of fact and fable. Over the course of three decades, almost a million eager fortune-hunters, pioneers, and visionaries transformed the face of a continent—and displaced its previous inhabitants. The people who made the long and perilous journey over the Oregon and California trails drove this swift and astonishing change. In this magisterial volume, Will Bagley tells why and how this massive emigration began. While many previous authors have told parts of this story, Bagley has recast it in its entirety for modern readers. Drawing on research he conducted for the National Park Service’s Long Distance Trails Office, he has woven a wealth of primary sources—personal letters and journals, government documents, newspaper reports, and folk accounts—into a compelling narrative that reinterprets the first years of overland migration. Illustrated with photographs and historical maps, So Rugged and Mountainous is the first of a projected four-volume history, Overland West: The Story of the Oregon and California Trails. This sweeping series describes how the “Road across the Plains” transformed the American West and became an enduring part of its legacy. And by showing that overland emigration would not have been possible without the cooperation of Native peoples and tribes, it places American Indians at the center of trail history, not on its margins.

In the spring of 1867, the country is focused on rebuilding after the Civil War. As westward emigration begins once again, two thousand miles of desolation and dust, drenching rains and blazing sun, and life and death await those brave enough to tackle the Oregon Trail. Ian O'Fallon, a solitary scout with a mysterious past, arrives in St. Louis on the request of his boss, Captain Tom Williams, to investigate an Irish horse breeder who wants to join his wagon train to Oregon. But everything changes when he meets the breeder--the beautiful widow, Danny Seabhac, who has a dream of starting a horse farm in Oregon. As the two become acquainted, Ian begins to fall in love with her. But there is one problem: Danny has her own secret--a past that may have more to do with Ian than he realizes. Danny is a story of determination and perseverance, life and death, and beginnings and endings as a wagon train embarks on a dangerous journey on the Oregon Trail with two passengers about to realize their true destinies.

A sweeping narrative of a classic journey