Albert Jerome Dickson was fourteen years old in 1864 when he left LaCrosse, Wisconsin, in a small caravan of covered wagons headed for Montana Territory. Thousands of emigrants had preceded him on the Oregon Trail, but none ever described the journey in sharper detail. Covered Wagon Days recreates the daily progress of Dickson's party, which included his guardians, Joshua and Rebecca Ridgley. The logistics of such a trip, the sights along a trail marked by ruts and fresh graves, the rigors of camping, the encounters with Indians and returning pilgrims and vigilantes running after road agents—all figure in Dickson's memoir. The payoff for the Ridgleys is not the gold being discovered in the mountains near Virginia City but a fine farm in Gallatin Valley. As vivid as any novel about the Oregon Trail and pioneering in the Northwest, Covered Wagon Days, first published in 1929, is based on journals and materials that were edited by the author's son, Arthur Jerome Dickson.

The American West was a notion, not a nation. It was a process, not a place. The native animal and human life of the West was displaced, replaced, and exterminated- sixty million bison to make way for European bog animals, billions of passenger pigeons for nothing, and ninety percent of aboriginal native Americans, out of an original population of possibly a hundred million, by accident and design. Late in the summer of 2013, I set out to find the Old West, what it had been, and what had replaced it. The quest for my own wild panorama would turn wheels of fortune into a movable feast of Wagon Days. And if this don’t get your fire started, your wood’s wet.

Describes what it was like traveling on the Oregon Trail, including what travelers ate, wore, and saw along the route

This is the story of the emigrants following the Oregon Trail in the year of 1867. One of families is the Silas Martin family and daughter Mary who keeps a diary of events along the trail. Mary had two suitors during the trip-flamboyant John James Fairfield, 19-year-old son of Capt. Fairfield and James Monroe Cromwell, son of Rev. Cromwell. In the spring 1867, construction on the transcontinental railroad had reached Fort Kearney, Nebraska. Some emigrants were now using the railroad for their westward push. In early spring of 1867, Silas Martin joined 20 other emigrant wagons and 2 cargo wagons at Independence Missouri to begin their trek up the trail. Capt. Zeb Fairfield is the wagon master. Capt. Fairfield has a secret contract with the Army to bring 200 Spencer repeating rifles and $200,000 in gold to General Armstrong Custer bivouacked at Fort Hall by September. The first attack on the wagon train was by the Platte River by a remnant of the Quantrill Raiders and the Cole Younger gang. As the wagon train moved westward, it moved into an area known as the High Plains Indian Wars as designated by the Army. The Sioux and Arapahoe Indians joined forces to attack settlers and wagon trains. The first Indian attack was before Fort Laramie by a large number of Indians. Several emigrants were killed and several dozen Indians. A small Indian war party attacked emigrants in a broken down wagon with one emigrant killed and several Indians. At Fort Hall, four the wagons turn north to Fort Henry. The first days the wagons were accompanied by the Calvary due to an uprising by any Blackfoot Indians. On the third night, a Blackfoot Indian slipped into the camp and attempted to kill Mary.