Going really West

By 1850, it seems that the desire to start a new life on the western frontier has turned into a mania. Even before there are any bridges across the Mississippi River, settlers are forming wagon trains on the far side.

They're heading for the Oregon Territory, 2,000 miles further west. The first few wagons soon turn into a constant flow, loaded up with supplies, and heading west from the last place you could buy anything, in Iowa.

Then, in 1849, gold is discovered in California. Americans sail all the way around South America to get there, a trip of 20,000 miles. Gold fever runs so high that sailors abandon their ships in San Francisco, to join the rush.


	Long Journey Settlers take their wagons all the way to the Pacific, bypassing land in between which is hostile and forbidding. Indians can survive on the Great Plains, hunting buffalo, but the land is too dry for farming without irrigation. Reports from Oregon and California, by contrast, describe lush valleys and majestic peaks, a vision that attracts 300,00 within 20 years. Then the gold rush hits.



	On the Trail Couples heading off to Oregon can expect to receive a square mile of land at no cost when they arrive. Few have any idea how difficult the journey to get there will prove. Crossing the prairie is relatively painless, but land on the other side of the Rocky Mountains turns much more barren, a place where horses die. Oxen are better suited to survive the remainder of the trip. During the 1840s, the area around the Great Salt Lake is also settled by a hardy, non-Christian religious sect called the Mormons.


	Glitter of Gold The California Gold Rush of 1849 is an amazing event. It's nearly impossible to get to California at all, but men come anyway. The easy way is to sail all the way around South America to San Francisco, but this takes four or five months. A faster, more popular route, is to take a steamship to the Atlantic coast of Panama, spend a week crossing through malaria-infested jungles to the Pacific side, and then pick up another steamer for San Francisco. You have to be young and strong to even think about it.