The tired pioneers bound on the Oregon Trail finally arrived in today's eastern Washington at the Columbia River. It was not like coming from the Midwest to shirtsleeve weather, because, for many, it was winter. Snow then fell along the river frequently, until the westbound traveler was well beyond the Cascades Range that stands north/south between The Dalles and Portland, and from Canada almost to Mexico.
A diary of a pioneer woman told of how some of her family had ridden the rapid-strewn Columbia River. However, she was walking along the river with her infant son, shivering and her feet like lumps of ice. I am sure she was wondering why they had come all this way, only to suffer so bitterly. At the time the migration wagons stopped at the river's edge or long before, and rafts on the river or one's own two feet were the transportation means.
Many of the pioneers put their wagons (minus their wheels) onto flimsy rafts that collapsed in the first of the river's many rapids and sank. A railroad group soon struggled to extend a crude train eastward from Portland or Vancouver, but it took time to manage an easy way for anyone traveling through the rugged Columbia Gorge. Those fortunate pioneers who made it in more favorable weather now were in temperate, green pastures south of the Columbia River in the Willamette country of Oregon, thanking the Lord they made it. Read about it in my late 2013 published book, Columbia River.
While I was passing along the North Platte, skirting such historic places as Chimney Rock and Scotts Bluff**, the reality of the challenges of our forefathers moving west to seek farmland and homes for their young-uns was driven home in the contrast of my travel by comfortable van. And rightfully indignant native Americans already living along these trails were not there to threaten me, either.
**Scottsbluff, Scott's Bluff, Scotts Bluff all are spellings for this area.
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