This popular guide describes the markers installed by the Oregon-California Trails Association's Graves and Sites Committee, providing a comprehensive compilation and description of the trail's fading remnants. For each sign, the book contains directions, the exact text, general background, and access ownership, arranged in sequence from east to west.

The Oregon, California and Mormon Trails by Air provides interesting and educational routing options to Portland, Oregon, Reno, Nevada, and Salt Lake City, Utah. Whether you are a commercial pilot seeking to entertain your passengers a private pilot seeking an alternative to the "$100 burger" or a non-pilot interested in Trail history, this guide book will prove to be a valuable tool and make fascinating reading. Fire up your plane and follow the routes taken one hundred and fifty years ago by over three hundred thousand immigrants. Amaze your friends for years with hundreds of facts like: Thirty thousand of those three hundred thousand died en route and are buried along the Trails. If all those graves were evenly spaced along the route, there would be a grave every two hundred and forty feet along the two-thousand-plus miles of Trail. Enjoy a perspective of the still remaining ruts that is denied to those bound by gravity as you follow the Trails using the maps and route descriptions included in this guide. Coordinates for the major attractions allow detailed plotting and locating of landmarks that were used by those who were bound for Oregon, California and Salt Lake City.--Cover

With numbers swelled by Oregon-bound settlers as well as hordes of gold-seekers destined for California, the 1852 overland migration was the largest on record in a year taking a terrible toll in lives mainly due to deadly cholera. Included here are firsthand accounts of this fateful year, including the words and thoughts of a young married couple, Mary Ann and Willis Boatman, released for the first time in book-length form. In its immediacy, Surviving the Oregon Trail, 1852 opens a window to the travails of the overland journeyers--their stark camps, treacherous river fordings, and dishonest countrymen; the shimmering plains and mountain vastnesses; trepidation at crossing ancient Indian lands; and the dark angel of death hovering over the wagon columns. But also found here are acts of valor, compassion, and kindness, and the hope for a new life in a new land at the end of the trail.

"Bruff's Wake tells the story of forty-niners who survived hardship with resolve and endurance. The accompanying illustrations, which include a number of Bruff's sketches paired with modern photographs taken at the same sites, give vivid depictions of life and death on the California Trail in 1849. In addition, Bruff's route is correlated to the geography of the modern era, so that the trail can be traced on modern maps. Taken together, the narrative, sketches, photographs, and geological descriptions of the terrain, coupled with generous quotes from Bruff's long-out-of-print journal, allow the reader to follow in Bruff's wake" -- Publisher's description, p. [4] of cover.

Death was a difficult and lonely event on the plains when many families traveled without close kin or the same support groups they relied on back in their settled lives. In addition, they often lacked the time, materials, and rituals that mark death and burial in more established communities making the transition even more difficult. Previous scholars of the Oregon-California Trail have maintained that due to the necessities of keeping speed on the trail, scarcity of resources and an emotional detachment to death, emigrants put little effort into mourning the deceased and rushed through burials, sometimes merely throwing dirt on top of the corpse. However, using diaries and letters from the Oregon and California Trails, it is possible to demonstrate that deaths could not be separated from the ritualized mourning and burial practices typical of nineteenth century United States culture.

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