Accidents along the Trail
The greatest dangers along the Overland Trail were disease and accident. Except for sanitary precautions, then little known, disease was perhaps unavoidable. Accidents, ...
Overland Trail
What We Found
Overland Trail
The overloading of wagons and pack animals prior to Overland Trail journeys resulted in the abandonment of worldly possessions along the trail. An overload of supplies, ...
Floating the Platte River in Fur Trade Days
Wagon teams ford the South Platte River near present-day Hershey, Nebraska, in 1866. NSHS RG3351-32
Nebraskans familiar with the Platte River would probably ...
Nebraska Stagecoaches
The overland stagecoach leaving Cottonwood Springs, near Fort Cottonwood (later Fort McPherson, Nebraska). Illustration from The Overland Stage to California ...
Ash Hollow
Ash Hollow is a picturesque wooded canyon in Garden County, Nebraska, three miles southeast of Lewellyn. A branch of the Overland Trail ran northwest from the Lower ...
Lilljeholm, John
Authors of trail diaries and reminiscences rarely discuss what they expect to experience on the journey west. One exception was John Lilljeholm, who was living in ...
Dundass Overland Trail Diary
Over seven hundred travelers along the Great Platte River Road left journals or diaries about their experiences in going West. These documents often have a vividness ...
Fashion Along the Overland Trail
There was, of course, no standard emigrant costume for crossing the Plains, as Merrill Mattes points out in his Great Platte River Road, but the prevailing styles may be ...
Food Along the Overland Trail
The food supply was the heaviest and most essential part of an overland emigrant's outfit. It was necessary to pack the right amount. Too large a quantity of food would ...
Fort Kearny, 1849
The discovery of gold in California early in 1848 had a pronounced effect upon travel past Fort Kearny in 1849. News of the discovery did not reach the Atlantic coast ...
Crime Along the Overland Trail
Lawlessness along the Overland Trail to Oregon and California, according to Merrill Mattes, author of The Great Platte River Road, was relatively low. There were no ...
Darwin Diary
In 1849 Charles Ben Darwin, a twenty-six-year-old attorney living with his wife and young son in Paris, Tennessee, fell victim to gold fever. In the early spring of that ...
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