From “a virtuoso storyteller in a very American vein”
(Phillip Lopate), The Oregon Trail is an epic account
of traveling the length of the Oregon Trail the
old-fashioned way—in a covered wagon with a team of mules,
an audacious journey that hasn’t been attempted in a
century—which also chronicles the rich history of the trail,
the people who made the migration, and its significance to
the country.
Spanning two thousand miles and
traversing six states from Missouri to the Pacific coast,
the Oregon Trail is the route that made America. In the
fifteen years before the Civil War, when 400,000 pioneers
used the trail to emigrate West—scholars still regard this
as the largest land migration in history—it united the
coasts, doubled the size of the country, and laid the
groundwork for the railroads. Today, amazingly, the trail is
all but forgotten.
Rinker Buck is no stranger to
grand adventures. His first travel narrative, Flight of
Passage, was hailed by The New Yorker as “a funny, cocky
gem of a book,” and with The Oregon Trail he brings
the most important route in American history back to
glorious and vibrant life.
Traveling from St.
Joseph, Missouri, to Baker City, Oregon, over the course of
four months, Buck is accompanied by three cantankerous
mules, his boisterous brother, Nick, and an “incurably
filthy” Jack Russell terrier named Olive Oyl. Along the way,
they dodge thunderstorms in Nebraska, chase runaway mules
across the Wyoming plains, scout more than five hundred
miles of nearly vanished trail on foot, cross the Rockies,
and make desperate fifty-mile forced marches for water. The
Buck brothers repair so many broken wheels and axels that
they nearly reinvent the art of wagon travel itself. They
also must reckon with the ghost of their father, an
eccentric yet loveable dreamer whose memory inspired their
journey across the plains and whose premature death, many
years earlier, has haunted them both ever since.
But
The Oregon Trail is much more than an epic adventure.
It is also a lively and essential work of history that
shatters the comforting myths about the trail years passed
down by generations of Americans. Buck introduces readers to
the largely forgotten roles played by trailblazing
evangelists, friendly Indian tribes, female pioneers,
bumbling U.S. Army cavalrymen, and the scam artists who
flocked to the frontier to fleece the overland emigrants.
Generous portions of the book are devoted to the history of
old and appealing things like the mule and the wagon. We
also learn how the trail accelerated American economic
development. Most arresting, perhaps, are the stories of the
pioneers themselves—ordinary families whose extraordinary
courage and sacrifice made this country what it became.
At once a majestic journey across the West, a
significant work of history, and a moving personal saga,
The Oregon Trail draws readers into the journey of a
lifetime. It is a wildly ambitious work of nonfiction from a
true American original. It is a book with a heart as big as
the country it crosses.
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