What is the "Oregon Trail'?

The Oregon Trail is a historic 2,000-mile (3,264-km) trail used by American pioneers living in the Great Plains in the 19th century. The immigrants traveled by wagon in search of fertile land in Oregon's Willamette Valley.

The Oregon Trail is now a historic East/West, large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail in the United States that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon.

The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of the future state of Kansas, and nearly all of what are now the states of Nebraska and Wyoming. The western half of the trail spanned most of the future states of Idaho and Oregon.

The Oregon Trail was laid by fur traders and trappers from about 1811 to 1840, and was only passable on foot or by horseback. By 1836, wagon trails were cleared increasingly farther west, and eventually reached all the way to the Willamette Valley in Oregon, at which point what came to be called the Oregon Trail was complete.

Graves were often put in the middle of a trail and then run over by the livestock to make them difficult to find. Disease was the main killer of trail travelers; cholera killed up to 3 percent of all travelers in the epidemic years from 1849 to 1855.

Increased attacks along the Humboldt led to most travelers' taking the Central Nevada Route. Other common causes of death included hypothermia, scurvy, drowning in river crossings, getting run over by wagons, and accidental gun deaths.