Days On the Road: Crossing the Plains in 1865

By Sarah Raymond Herndon

Days on the Road is a trail journal detailing a family's trek west across the Great Plains during the waning days of the Civil War. The colorful travelogue, written on the famed Oregon Trail, is both an important historical document and an absorbing read.

*New revised 2018 edition includes an introduction by Damian Stevenson.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Old Pioneer Press
• Release date: May 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9781387819683

Book preview

wagons.

Introduction

THE OREGON TRAIL WAS the route blazed by 1840’s pioneers along a path first carved in boots by trappers and traders decades before. It cut east to west through territory that became six states – Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho and Oregon. From Independence, Missouri to Oregon City on the coast, the meandering path was 2,130 miles long.

With few navigable waterways in the West, the wagon train was the only option. Passengers embarked in late spring, to make the most of what grazing there was but with enough time to hit the mountains before the snows set in. An organized train pulled by horses could get to the Pacific in five or six months if everything went spectacularly well (it rarely did) or nearly twice that time if oxen did the hauling.

Leaving was hard, but not as hard as getting there. Disease took its toll and many perished from fatigue on the hot, dusty road. Accidents happened frequently, like the unintended discharging of a firearm, as occurs in Days On the Road. Bad-timing or unforeseen delay could result in disaster, like winter famine as in the notorious 1846 California-bound Donner Party from Illinois who went from roasting mules to roasting each other after being stuck in towering snow drifts.

Native American attacks were rare but many feared the specter of marauding ‘Indians,’ an unfounded misgiving that probably took root before they left home. In Days On the Road, Sarah Herndon records meeting a pair of would-be gold hunters heading in the opposite direction. Rumors of an Indian attack further up the trail had made them turn around. Sarah, imbued with the pioneer mettle that these men lack, doesn’t mince words when she writes:

We would not like to be scalped and butchered by the Indians, but it does seem so cowardly to run away from a possible danger ... Poor fellows, how I pity a man that has so little grit.

Another potential hazard on the journey was mismanagement of the train. Weak captains were challenged by those who thought they could do better and family rifts could see wagons splintering off, headed to the likely doom that came with isolation and straying from the path.

Horses were hard to maintain as water became increasingly scarce further West. Only military convoys could afford the space for fodder. Mules served a purpose but were unreliable. An ox was less fussy, could take the summer heat and was the only beast of burden capable of hauling heavy loads up steep inclines. Most expeditions like the one in Days On the Road used a combination of animals in the rotation. Occasional solo rides on horseback meant more room in the wagon. Herndon follows her family’s schooner from atop a pony whenever terrain permits.

The covered prairie-schooner was the conveyance of choice, a re-imagined, sleeker version of the bulky Conestoga, and it was tailor-made for the Oregon Trail. Evolving over the pre-locomotive decades into a highly durable vehicle, it soon had the comfortable capacity (and optional furnishings) of a home on the road.

Image: Line art drawing of a Conestoga wagon.

THE PRAIRIE SHIP WAS built to withstand varied trail conditions; plain, desert and mountain; and with a lighter frame, it moved faster than the Conestoga. There were many sizes and varieties. Herndon’s ‘mother-ship’ had a load capacity of about 2,000 pounds, which was typical.

Image: A Prairie Schooner pulled by oxen on the Cariboo Road or in the vicinity of Rogers Pass, Selkirk Mountains, c. 1887, by Edward Roper.

HERNDON MENTIONS AN encounter with a couple headed for the Montana gold mines traveling in a more compact, buggy-style vehicle. At the other end of the scale, a freight wagon led by twelve yoke of oxen – twenty-four animals - could haul around seven thousand pounds.

Sadly, many settlers learned the capacity of their wagon too late and were forced to eject precious household items. Trail diaries mention bleached pianos, rocking chairs and other items heaped in the dust by the side of the road. A result of sentimental miscalculation perhaps but also partly attributable to the persuasive sales pitches of unscrupulous businessmen who had convinced departing families that they would need more items on the road than they did.

Image: The part migrants played in growing America is epitomized in the 1872 painting ‘American Progress’ by immigrant John Gast:

LIKE THE MAIN VEIN of a raggedy highway system, the Oregon interlaced other established routes crisscrossing the West, each leading to a hot-spot. Trains tended to merge whenever going in the same direction. Inclusion was practical. They would indeed ‘circle the wagons’ at night to deter predators and to create a campground atmosphere for the big barbecue of roast deer, antelope or whatever else the hunters were able to snag that day, which was usually something.

Precious provisions were for emergencies, and the pioneers lived off the land most of the time, certainly in the early phase of the exodus. One can imagine the mounds of garbage and other detritus that piled up over the years on what became a mile-wide route by the 1860s. And the hordes of scarfed thieves and dandy mountebanks hawking fake mining claims, quack medicine and anything else they could pass off as genuine to the vulnerable and desperate.

There were established stops on the map from the beginning. Forts, lodges and mission stations were supplanted by hotels and one-horse towns as traffic increased. Outposts of the dying fur trade adapted to the new income stream by expanding dining and rest facilities for weary pilgrims. Supply depots sprouted up along the trail selling a vast array of marked-up goods.

As in Herndon’s book, pioneers were fed and housed by settlers who had blazed before them and planted roots along or close to the trail. Etiquette dictated that children should sleep in a house whenever possible and road-hosts would often oblige, perhaps out of settler camaraderie but more likely because they were excited to have visitors to entertain.

Image: Crossing the frozen Mississippi River.

FORT LARAMIE WAS A key hub on the Platte River Road where wagons headed for places other than Oregon City branched off. But the most significant split occurred on the other side of the Continental Divide, at Fort Hall. Here the family-farmers continued on to the Pacific Northwest, following the Snake River to the Blue Mountains and beyond them to the Columbia River.  California gold seekers forked southwest toward the unforgiving deserts and, if they made it through them, to the indomitable Sierras, the final barrier to reaching any one of a number of mushrooming strikes or precious ore-rich valleys.

Many more pioneers got rich without ever having to touch a pick or hoe, unless they happened to be selling one. They established markets and department stores and trades and services. Boom-towns like Virginia City, Nevada rapidly came to rival the sophistication of San Francisco, with saloons catering to the elite, offering oysters and Champagne on the bill of fare. 

There really was gold lying on the ground, like the gold-silver rocks found scattered on the slopes of Nevada’s Virginia Mountains in 1859, which became the famous Comstock Lode.

Image: Comstock’s revolutionary modular mining framework was an engineering concept developed in-house but not patented, leading to mass adoption by the industry worldwide.

BUT WHEN IT DIDN’T pan out, literally, sieves for rivers were swapped for picks and $4 an hour guaranteed in the established mines. You could make double that if you had the skills to get into Comstock, a staggering rate for a miner in 1859-60. 

Image: Bullion Mine, Virginia City, c.1875-77.

THEY KNEW IT WAS A gamble, both miner and farmer. For every fortune-hunter who returned home rich there was a dozen who vanished into the dust, never to be heard from again. During the long, arduous months of travel, hastily-dug roadside graves were a constant reminder of the treacherous path they were on. The grass did turn out to be greener for those who made it to the Pacific Northwest, only it wasn’t a fence they had to scale, but swollen river-fords, wheel-wrecking sloughs, impassable canyons, frozen foothills and countless other obstacles.

Proof that you could arrive safe and flourish was visible in the many towns, cities and states that emerged from the thirty year migration. The Civil War brought the railroads and by 1869 if you saw a mile-long wagon train of pioneers on the plains, it was probably a mirage.

The majority of those who set out somehow arrived safe and a good portion of them even prospered. But the pioneer spirit was in the going, not the outcome. The blazers left permanent rut marks in the earth; proof that they were here; eternal signposts for people heading west.

We Start

AS I SIT HERE IN THE shade of our prairie-schooner, with this blank book ready to record the events of this our first day on the road, the thought comes to me:

"Why are we here? Why have we left home, friends, relatives, associates, and loved ones, who have made so large a part of our lives and added so much to our happiness? Are we not taking great risks, in thus venturing into the wilderness? When devoted men and women leave home, friends and the enjoyments of life to go to some far heathen land, obeying the command: Go, preach my Gospel, to every creature, we look on and applaud and desire to emulate them. There is something so sublime, so noble in the act that elevates the missionary above the common order of human beings that we are not surprised that they make the sacrifice, and we silently wish that we, too, had been called to do missionary work.

But when people who are comfortably and pleasantly situated pull up stakes and leave all, or nearly all, that makes life worth the living, start on a long, tedious, and perhaps dangerous journey, to seek a home in a strange land among strangers, with no other motive than that of bettering their circumstances, by gaining wealth, and heaping together riches, that perish with the using, it does seem strange that so many people do it.

The motive does not seem to justify the inconvenience, the anxiety, the suspense that must be endured. Yet how would the great West be peopled were it not so? God knows best. It is, without doubt, this spirit of restlessness, and unsatisfied longing, or ambition—if you please—which is implanted in our nature by an all-wise Creator that has peopled the whole earth.

This has been a glorious May Day. The sky most beautifully blue, the atmosphere delightfully pure, the birds twittering joyously, the earth seems filled with joy and gladness. God has given us this auspicious day to inspire our hearts with hope and joyful anticipation, this our first day’s journey on the road across the plains and mountains.

It was hard to say good-bye to our loved and loving friends, knowing that we were not at all likely to meet again in this life. I felt very much like indulging in a good cry, but refrained, and Dick and I were soon speeding over the beautiful prairie, overtaking Cash, who had lingered behind the others, waiting for me.

A penny for your thoughts, Cash?

I was wondering if we will ever tread Missouri soil again?

Quite likely we shall, we are young in years, with a long life before us, no doubt we will come on a visit to Missouri when we get rich.

We were passing a very comfortable looking farmhouse, men, women, and children were in the yard, gazing after us, as we cantered past.

Don’t you believe they envy us and wish they were going, too?

No, why should they?

Oh, because it is so jolly to be going across the continent; it is like a picnic every day for months; I was always sorry picnic days were so short, and now it will be an all-summer picnic.

I wish I felt that way; aren’t you sorry to leave your friends?

"Of course I am, but then I shall write long letters to