The Oregon Trail is a 2,000-mile east-west-north-south wheeled wagon trail that connected the Missouri River to Oregon. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of Kansas, Nebraska and Wyoming. The western half of the trail spanned most of Idaho and Oregon.
The beginnings of the Oregon Trail were laid Lewis and Clark, fur traders and trappers from about 1811 to 1840. These trails were only passable on foot or by horseback. But by 1836, when the first migrant wagon train was organized in Independence, Missouri, a wagon trail had been made to a fort in Idaho. Wagon trails were cleared further and further west, eventually reaching all the way to the Willamette Valley in Oregon which is where I live.
From the early 1830's through about 1869 the Oregon Trail and its many offshoots were used by about 400,000 settlers, ranchers, farmers, miners, and businessmen and their families
My consuming art interests are in painting stories relating to the life and hardships of the migrant families of Oregon and the beauty of the countryside.
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