Oregon Trail: One Family’s Story by Cyndi Rivers is a fascinating true account of an extended family’s journey across the Oregon Trail in 1853.
Lewis Ray and Nancy Kimes and their two little daughters ages 3 and 2, plus Nancy’s widowed mother Elizabeth and her three children, left their Missouri homes for the Willamette Valley in Oregon. Their ambitious goal was to live close to Nancy’s older brother and his family.
Preparing for such a journey was challenging. They would travel in two wagons that were about 10 feet long and 4 feet wide. They had 6 oxen for each wagon: 4 to pull at one time and 2 to rest by just walking rather than pulling the heavy loads. The wagons were full of essentials with not much sleeping space, so they had to provide for outside sleeping. Food and water had to be carefully planned and doled out, plus adequate clothing to last for the long, arduous trip.
They could only take essentials which meant leaving behind family treasures. Later, they would see discarded items along the trail—furniture, heavy tools, even a piano— items that families had brought but later had to abandon to lighten the loads.
They traveled for several days from western Missouri to join a wagon train in St. Joseph. The trip with the wagon train had barely begun when Lewis Ray died crossing the Missouri River, leaving his pregnant wife and their two little daughters. It was a crushing blow to the two families, and left them in a bad situation since he had been the only adult male in the group. In addition, they were a liability to the wagon train since now their group consisted of only an elderly woman, a pregnant woman, and 5 children. Luckily, there were two adult brothers on the wagon train who could drive the wagons, allowing the party to resume their journey. After traveling six months, they arrived at their destination, the Willamette Valley.
Oregon Trail is a captivating story of determination and struggle. People often died along the way from drinking contaminated water, often the cause of cholera, drowning, wagon accidents, children crushed by wagon wheels, cattle stampedes, etc. The author has included pictures, maps and documentation of the period. This account of her family’s history—the Kimes were her great-great-grandparents—is a story of determination and grit.