Dogs on the Oregon Trail: What the Records Show

Part 1

The route dogs and pioneers traveled

The Oregon Trail was a wagon route that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon Territory. It stretched about 2,170 miles, from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City, Oregon. The eastern part crossed present-day Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming, while the western half crossed Idaho and Oregon. Fur traders and trappers laid the trail between about 1811 and 1840, and at first it was only passable on foot or horseback. By 1836 wagon trains could reach Fort Hall in Idaho, and the route was eventually cleared all the way to the Willamette Valley. You can picture a dog trotting beside a wagon over that same rugged ground.

Part 2

How many people made the trip

About 400,000 settlers, farmers, miners, ranchers, and business owners used the trail and its offshoots to reach the area known as Oregon. Traffic was especially heavy between 1846 and 1869. Use of the trail declined after the first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, which made the trip west faster, cheaper, and safer. Imagine your own dog among that huge, slow-moving crowd of wagons and animals.

Part 3

Ezra Meeker's faithful dog

Ezra Meeker first crossed the plains from Iowa to Oregon by ox team in 1852, traveling with his young wife and child. After more than fifty years of building a life in the Pacific Northwest, he decided to retrace the almost lost Oregon Trail. He rebuilt an old covered wagon and trained a yoke of oxen for the trip. He set out with one companion and a faithful dog. The ox-team journey from Washington state to the nation's capital took nearly two years to complete. Through his effort, substantial monuments were later placed along much of the old pioneer route. If you have ever driven a long distance with your dog, you know how much company an animal can be on a slow trip.

Part 4

Narcissa Whitman and the diary of a canoe

Narcissa Whitman and her missionary husband joined a small caravan bound for Oregon in 1836. She sent letters and diary entries to relatives describing the journey and reassuring them that travel by wagon was practical. Those letters were widely published in eastern newspapers and helped draw more Americans west. While crossing at the Otoe Agency, her party had to rely on a canoe made of skins that had been partly eaten by dogs the night before. In 1847 Whitman and her husband were killed by members of the Cayuse tribe, and their mission on the Walla Walla River was destroyed. Reading these old pages, you get a sense of how ordinary a dog's presence could be, even when it barely earns a mention.

Part 5

The cost in lives

The trail was lined by the graves of about twenty thousand people who died along the way. Disease was a major cause of death among travelers. It is worth remembering that hardship on the trail; it shaped every mile a dog would have walked too.

Part 6

A moving camp for animals

A wagon train functioned as a moveable community for four to six months along the trail. Each evening the wagons often formed a circle to make a temporary corral, with tents pitched outside it. Guards watched the grazing livestock overnight for wild animals or thieves. Camp woke at sunrise, often around four o'clock, when guards called out or fired their rifles. The train stopped again at midday to rest and graze the animals before moving on in cooler hours.

Part 7

Animals commonly brought on the Oregon Trail

• Oxen were generally preferred because they were stronger, cheaper, and could survive on less food.
• Mules were faster than oxen but cost more to buy.
• Horses were used for riding, hunting, and breeding once families reached their destination.

Part 8

The hardest years on the trail

The expression "seeing the elephant" described the worst part of the journey, when emigrants' lives hung in the balance. The year 1852 may have been the hardest of all because of heavy traffic and outbreaks of cholera. More people took the trail that year than in any year before or after, which meant more animals competing for scarce grass and more dust.