Selected Oregon Trail, Oregon History, and books about Pioneers, 1.
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Wagon Wheel Kitchens: Food on the Oregon Trail
by Jacqueline Williams, Sam'l P. Arnold

Happy Trials.
Reviewer: Claudia Talbert from Richmond

   Good read for those interested in how their ancestors ate -- especially if it is known one of them was among those who went west using this particular route. Highly recommended.

Book Description
Pioneer temperaments, Jacqueline Williams shows, were greatly influenced by that which was stewable, bakable, broilable, and boilable. Using travelers' diaries, letters, newspaper advertisements, and nineteenth-century cookbooks, Williams re-creates the highs and lows of cooking and eating on the Oregon Trail. She investigates the mundane--biscuits and bacon, mush and coffee--as well as the unexpected--carbonated soda made from bubbling spring water; ice cream created from milk, snow, and peppermint; fresh fruits and vegetables. Understanding what and how the pioneers ate, Williams demonstrates, is essential to understanding how they lived and survived--and sometimes died--on the trail.

A Pioneer's Search for an Ideal Home
by Phoebe Goodell Judson

A window into 1850s American exploration and pioneer women.
Reviewer: wegoodell from Detroit, Michigan

   "A Pioneer's Search for an Ideal Home" provides an outstanding window into the life and times of the American migration westward. Through the eyes of Phoebe Goodell Judson, one lives the trials of the Oregon trail, the challenges of pioneering, and a powerful perspective on the American mind during the last half of the 19th Century. 20 years old and 7 months pregnant, Phoebe begins the 7 month treck from Ohio to Vancouver, Washington. Through her diaries, she chronicles the life changing experiences of exploration and community building that did so much to shape the American culture. One only wishes that she had kept additional records and thoughts as the reader is left wishing that there was more. First person story-telling at it's best, be prepared to go looking for maps of Washington and the Oregon Trail.

The Donner Party Chronicles:
A Day-by-Day Account of a Doomed Wagon Train, 1846-47
by Frank Mullen

This is the Donner Party book I've been looking for!
Reviewer: laa-laa from smalltown, USA

   The full-color, glossy photographs of major landmarks and points of interest along the Emigrant Trail from Springfield, MO to Johnson's Ranch in Bear Valley are stunning. The color photos, all taken by Marilyn Newton, are grouped together in the beginning of the book, comprising 20 slick pages of almost 50 photos. It's hard to believe that wagon ruts from over 150 years ago still exist in places; happily, our continuous farming, building and paving haven't obliterated all traces of the route that so many people rode--and walked--in order to reach California.

   Portraits, maps, drawings and sketches from the period are interspersed with sepia-toned contemporary photographs, some taken by Newton and some by other photographers, and appear on every page of the book. "The Donner Party Chronicles" is visually rich and stimulating. The area around Donner Lake and the route the relief parties followed are depicted in all seasons of the year. Even in black-and-white, the photos of Donner Lake and the surrounding mountains demonstrate the ruggedness of the terrain and deeply impress upon the reader the hopelessness the members of the Donner Party must have felt upon being snowed-in at the lake.

   The book reads like a journal that would have been kept by one of the emigrants traveling with the Donner Party. The text is reprinted from installments journalist Frank Mullen, Jr. published in the weekly newspaper "The Reno Gazette-Journal" over the course of an entire year. The daily routine followed, problems encountered, and decisions made by the Donner Party are chronicled in a concise manner. The entries are short, most three or four paragraphs in length.

   One very interesting feature of "The Donner Party Chronicles" is the map of the Emigrant Trail that appears on every left-hand page of the book, with the progress of the doomed emigrants clearly marked with a red dot. As you read along through the book, you see on every other page exactly where the emigrants were as the day's events took place. I found this map extremely helpful and fascinating. Watching the movement of the Donner Party as they traveled on foot at the pace of slow, plodding oxen made me better able to understand how great an undertaking their overland journey was. I shared this book with my husband, my Dad and my father-in-law, and they enjoyed it almost as much as I did!

   This book is well worth the price, for the interesting text as well as the terrific photos; you can easily find what you're looking for in the pages, as each page is dated and the day's entry fairly short.

Surviving the Oregon Trail, 1852
by Mary Ann Boatman, Willis Boatman, Weldon Willis Rau

Surviving the Oregon Trail 1852
Reviewer: J. Eric Schuster from Tumwater, WA USA

   I have known the author for more than 30 years, so I have been aware of his 15-year effort to research, write, and publish this book as it unfolded. It is with pleasure, therefore, that I can attest to how well crafted it is. Rau tells the story of his great-grandparents' journey by employing extensive quotes from their written accounts and from the accounts of other 1852 Oregon Trail travelers. These quotes are woven together and amplified by Rau's observations of the physical, cultural, and social settings they experienced, including how the geology along the way influenced the development of the terrain. The book is also very well edited. I found but one typographical error and two place names missing from one map.

   Besides being very well crafted, the book has left me with several strong impressions. The travelers, especially the men, approached the trip with a sense of romanticism. It was going to be a grand adventure with a pot of gold waiting at the end. A very different reality forced its way into their consciousness as the trip unfolded. The trip brought out all the best and worst traits of the travelers and those who sought to serve and usually profit from them along the way. They experienced disease, death, and discomfort. They and others suffered from cholera, scurvy, and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Mary Ann and Willis' brothers both died on the trip, as did many others they met along the way. Mary Ann was pregnant for the whole trip and had to walk much of the way, in addition to performing the cooking and other housekeeping chores that fell to her. In addition there were extremes of weather, loneliness, homesickness, sorrow, grief, resignation, thievery, greed, and hardheadedness. These were balanced by bravery, resoluteness, kindness, compassion, neighborliness, concern, and assistance, sometimes from people they didn't even know. The journey had but three possible outcomes; they had to turn back and reach their former homes, get to the Willamette Valley, or die before winter hit. In some ways their journey can be compared with what the first interplanetary travelers will experience. Indeed, even after Willis and mary Ann reached the relative safety of the Willamette Valley and then the Puget Sound country, for years they felt as isolated and separated from their families as if they were on another planet.

   If you have had no real appreciation for the magnitude of the feat that Oregon Trail travelers accomplished, you will have when you finish this book.

Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie:
The Oregon Trail Diary of Hattie Campbell, 1847
(Dear America)
by Kristiana Gregory

On The Oregon Trail...
Reviewer: Lisa

   This adventurous and exciting story is about a young girl named Hattie Campbell, growing up in Missoura in 1847. This story is about the exciting sensation she gets when her father announces they are traveling west to Oregon. This story is about her triumphs and losses along the Oregon Trail. After she meets a 14 year-old girl named Pepper Lewis, they plan everything about their 'soon-to-be' life in the west. Everything changes when Pepper gets married...Will all of their plans change? Soon, Hattie longs for someone to love, just as Pepper has. Will she survive the long and harsh journey west?

   I loved this book! I definitely am glad I gave it 5 stars, because it's true! This is a very adventurous book and it makes me wish I lived in that time, for everything is so fun...But it turns out life is harsh on the trail. I recommend this book for 10-14 year-olds. When I bought this book I also bought "My Heart Is On The Ground" and "Voyage On The Great Titanic", all great stories of girls and their changing lives. Once again, I couldn't put it down! I loved it! :)

Westward Vision: The Story of the Oregon Trail
by David Sievert Lavender

A magnificent tale of stubborn true grit
Reviewer: Joe Haschka from Glendale, CA USA

   David Lavender's WESTWARD VISION spans the period from the mid-17th century to 1849 as he chronicles the search for a reliable overland route to, and the subsequent settlement of, what would become known as Oregon, principally that area which borders the Willamette River as it flows into the Columbia (at present-day Portland). As the subtitle of the book indicates, this is "the story of the Oregon Trail".

   For the sake of summary, I arbitrarily divide this book into five parts: early exploration of the Upper Mississippi River by French-Canadians seeking a route to the "western sea", the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the subsequent unsuccessful efforts to establish an easy route to Oregon via the Missouri River and its headwaters, the influx of "mountain men" into the area and the discovery of a more southerly route (the Oregon Trail), the early settlement in Oregon of Christian missionary groups sent to proselytize the Indians, and the massive immigration of land-seekers in the 1840's which ultimately resulted in the establishment of a U.S. Oregon Territory.

   WESTWARD VISION is the result of extensive research on the part of the author. Its wealth of details is both its strong point and its undoing. Probably the most commendably concise chapters (5 and 6), considering the length of the event, deal with the amazing Lewis and Clark Expedition. Perhaps Lavender thought the history of the two-year trek adequately covered elsewhere. In any case, the following chapters on the exploits and travails of the fur-trapping mountain men and the missionaries are so full of minutiae that it would require the reader to take extensive notes in order to keep track of the various groups and individuals endeavoring to cross the Great Divide into Oregon in the 1820s and 30s. (Reading this book for pleasure, I wasn't prepared to expend that much effort.) Only in Chapter 19, which gives an account of the 1843 journey of the first large immigrant train - almost 1000 persons- over the Oregon Trail, does the narrative regain a concise clarity. A major failing of the the volume is the lack of adequate maps to locate the majority of the named and innumerable places and geographical features: rivers, river forks, buttes, mountains, rocks, forts, mountain passes, river fords, trapper rendezvous, and settlements. Perusing contemporary state highway maps didn't help much. And in a work this extensive, I would have expected a large section of illustrations. Except for several very crude drawings, there were none.

   What elevates WESTWARD VISION, and compels me to award four stars, is that the author makes his point magnificently, i.e. that it took many tough people with large reserves of true grit to expand the fledgling United States to the Pacific's shores. The crossing was hard: "At the rainswept crossing of the North Platte, blue with cold, cramped by dysentery and pregnancy pangs, Mary Walker (an 1838 pilgrim) sat down and 'cried to think how comfortable my father's hogs were' (back home). As for Sarah Smith, Mary sniffed, she wept practically the entire distance to Oregon." And even recreation had a sharp edge, as at the 1832 trappers' rendezvous: "... a few of the boys poured a kettle of alcohol over a friend and set him afire. Somehow he lived through it, and fun's fun."
   Finally, Lavender eloquently suggests the reason so many embarked on the Oregon Trail at all: "What matters is not whether fulfillment was attainable in reality (at the Trail's end), but rather that at long last in the world's sad, torn history an appreciable part of mankind thought it might be. That was both the torment and the freedom - to go and look."

The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery [Abridged]
by Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, Gary E. Moulton (Editor)

Excellent abridgement of journals; on a par with DeVoto
Reviewer: strokesurvivor  from Cincinnati, Ohio United States

   Professor Moulton has done a tremendous job of abridging over one million words in this manageable volume of five hundred or so pages. This volume will be the functional equivalent of the DeVoto edition for the twenty-first century. An excellent job that preserves the personalities of both Clark and Meriwether Lewis. Too many editors cannot avoid the temptation of "correcting" the 1804-06 English of the pair.

A Pioneer Sampler: The Daily Life of a Pioneer Family in 1840
by Barbara Greenwood

Experience pioneer life!!!
Reviewer: A reader from SD United States

   Barbara Greenwood has written a wonderful book that is as much fun for adults to read to children as it is for the children to read themselves. She doesn't just 'tell' about the Robertson's, she 'shows', drawing the reader into their lives...a pleasant place to be. I especially love Granny's story about how she came to America, on a ship, from Scotland.

   The book is beautifully illustrated...all the way through...by Heather Collins. The pictures are so well done that, even as an adult, I would like to step into the scene!

   There are instructions for simple, fun activities such as growing a potato plant, dyeing fabric using an onion, or making a cardboard jumping jack; pioneer games that will even entertain today's children for hours such as shadow shapes or knucklebones; and recipes that are easy for children.

Reading this book to a child is a great 'stress reliever'...it's like a little escape from the treadmill of life!!!

Historic Baker City (Images of America: Oregon)
by Baker County Friends of the Library

About the Author
   These photographs have been compiled by the committee of the Baker County Friends of the Library. Eloise Dielman worked with members of the Historic Photo Committee, which includes Gary Dielman, Pearl Jones, Lennie Adams, Laura Hayse, Howard Brooks, and Grace Lewis.


Book Description
   To reach points of commerce for gold assaying or buying supplies, miners from the gold mining boom town of Auburn followed the Oregon Trail east or north. Where the pioneers entered Baker Valley from the gold fields, Baker City sprang up as the county seat of Baker County, named after Colonel Edward Baker, a senator from Oregon. For many years following its birth in 1864, Baker City was the largest town between Salt Lake City and Portland. It was a bustling depot for both stagecoach and rail travel. Gathered in this volume are over 200 photographs focusing on the historic past of Baker City, as well as the restored Victorian charm of its Main Street. From Baker City ís colorful early days, images capture the grand hotel, opera house, lively saloon district, Chinese settlement, and people and industries of the area. This photographic history brings to life the past and present places and events of Baker City and Baker County.

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