The Oregon Trail

In the bestselling tradition of Bill Bryson and Tony Horwitz, Rinker Buck's The Oregon Trail is a major work of participatory history: an epic account of traveling the 2,000-mile length of the Oregon Trail the old-fashioned way, in a covered wagon with a team of mules—which hasn't been done in a century—that also tells the rich history of the trail, the people who made the migration, and its significance to the country. Spanning 2,000 miles and traversing six states from Missouri to the Pacific Ocean, the Oregon Trail is the route that made America. In the fifteen years before the Civil War, when 400,000 pioneers used it to emigrate West—historians still regard this as the largest land migration of all time—the trail united the coasts, doubled the size of the country, and laid the groundwork for the railroads. The trail years also solidified the American character: our plucky determination in the face of adversity, our impetuous cycle of financial bubbles and busts, the fractious clash of ethnic populations competing for the same jobs and space. Today, amazingly, the trail is all but forgotten. Rinker Buck is no stranger to grand adventures. The New Yorker described his first travel narrative,Flight of Passage, as “a funny, cocky gem of a book,” and with The Oregon Trailhe seeks to bring the most important road in American history back to life. At once a majestic American journey, a significant work of history, and a personal saga reminiscent of bestsellers by Bill Bryson and Cheryl Strayed, the book tells the story of Buck's 2,000-mile expedition across the plains with tremendous humor and heart. He was accompanied by three cantankerous mules, his boisterous brother, Nick, and an “incurably filthy” Jack Russell terrier named Olive Oyl. Along the way, Buck dodges thunderstorms in Nebraska, chases his runaway mules across miles of Wyoming plains, scouts more than five hundred miles of nearly vanished trail on foot, crosses the Rockies, makes desperate fifty-mile forced marches for water, and repairs so many broken wheels and axels that he nearly reinvents the art of wagon travel itself. Apart from charting his own geographical and emotional adventure, Buck introduces readers to the evangelists, shysters, natives, trailblazers, and everyday dreamers who were among the first of the pioneers to make the journey west. With a rare narrative power, a refreshing candor about his own weakness and mistakes, and an extremely attractive obsession for history and travel,The Oregon Trail draws readers into the journey of a lifetime.

A quirky, nostalgic send-up to the Oregon Trail computer game, featuring snarky and hard-earned life lessons from the trail. Pack your wagons, find your ride-or-(literally) die friends, and roll up to Matt's General Store with a sack of cash--it's time to hit the Oregon Trail, twenty-first-century style! ...And Then You Die of Dysentery is the perfect send-up to the sometimes frustrating, always entertaining, and universally beloved Oregon Trail computer game. Featuring a four-color design in the game's iconic 8-bit format, alongside pop culture references galore, the book offers 50 humorous, snarky lessons gleaned from the game's most iconic moments, including gems such as: --Suffering from exhaustion is a real thing. (It's not just PR code for why a celebrity went to rehab.) --If you hunt too frequently in one area, game will become scarce. (The first signs of gentrification!) --Invite your sweetie to cuddle with you while looking up at the stars. (The night sky was the original Netflix & Chill. Step 1: Loosen up Orion's belt...) With its laugh-out-loud commentary and its absurdist nostalgia, ...And Then You Die of Dysentery is the ultimate trip down memory lane ... all the way to the Willamette Valley.

When Liz and Lenny's grandmother uses her magical hat to transport them all to the time of the pioneers in 1843, their grand adventure begins as they spend eight grueling months traveling across harsh terrain in an attempt to reach the other side of the country at the end of the Oregon Trail. Reprint.

"Describes the journey on the Oregon Trail from three different historical perspectives"--Provided by publisher.

Meet Ranger! He's a time-traveling golden retriever who has a nose for trouble . . . and always saves the day! Ranger has been trained as a search-and-rescue dog, but can't officially pass the test because he's always getting distracted by squirrels during exercises. One day, he finds a mysterious first aid kit in the garden and is transported to the year 1850, where he meets a young boy named Sam Abbott. Sam's family is migrating west on the Oregon Trail, and soon after Ranger arrives he helps the boy save his little sister. Ranger thinks his job is done, but the Oregon Trail can be dangerous, and the Abbotts need Ranger's help more than they realize!

Based on their extensive research into personal accounts of the Oregon Trail, comic authors David Lasky and Frank Young have created a graphic narrative of one family's epic journey. The main character is an 11-year-old girl whose family sets course for the West to seek new opportunities and to escape the eastern city where they had been living. Oregon Trail reveals all of the planning, equipment, and logistics that went into traveling across an untamed continent in the 1800s. In addition to its visualization of the family's journey, the book features a series of two-page spreads detailing a visual inventory of everything the family took with them, including the parts of a covered wagon and a personally annotated map of the trail. Readers get a ground-level feel for what it was like to be part of this storied migration west-not a dry recitation of dates and facts, but an immediately memorable living history.