Community Chat

[Marienkaefer2]

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@sassenach1 wrote:

It is a great story! I read it a few month ago.  What a modern historic adventure. I would love to experience a few days of the trail.  Our ancestors endured incredible hardship.

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@sassenach1

I agree!  I would have liked to do maybe two or three days of it, on an easy part, of course!  I'm a sissy.    

You're right, they were tough people.  I can't imagine it.

At the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center in Baker City, Oregon, they have a life size exhibit of the trail, complete with the sounds.  It's the closest you can get to actually feel what it was like.  I remember the sound of a child falling from a wagon and being run over by the wheels, which happened a lot.  Tears came to my eyes when I thought of all the hardships.

[azgal]

Sounds like a good book. 

I've been to the Oregon Trail Interpretive center in Baker City Oregon. Very interesting. You can even see the old ruts from the wagons.

@Kachina624 I read a really good book" Conversations with Pioneer Women". It's the oral history of Pacific Northwest women. A newspaper reporter interviewed these women late in their lives. It's an old book and may be hard to find. I found it at Powell's books in Portland which is huge. It's a city block! 

[Marienkaefer2]

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@azgal wrote:

Sounds like a good book. 

I've been to the Oregon Trail Interpretive center in Baker City Oregon. Very interesting. You can even see the old ruts from the wagons.

@Kachina624 I read a really good book" Conversations with Pioneer Women". It's the oral history of Pacific Northwest women. A newspaper reporter interviewed these women late in their lives. It's an old book and may be hard to find. I found it at Powell's books in Portland which is huge. It's a city block! 

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@azgal

Yes, seeing those ruts made an impression on me. (no pun intended.

I will look for the book too.  I think I may have heard of it.  Iived in Portland for ten years during the 1990s. Love Powell's.  

[Kalli]

Sounds like a great book.  I'm always looking for a good read and since I'm retiring very soon, I'll actually have time to read without guilt! 

(On a side note: I remember playing the computer game The Oregon Trail years ago with my son and I died of typhoid, I think.  That's the first thing I thought of when I saw this thread. )

[Lucky Charm]

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@Kalli wrote:

Sounds like a great book.  I'm always looking for a good read and since I'm retiring very soon, I'll actually have time to read without guilt! 

(On a side note: I remember playing the computer game The Oregon Trail years ago with my son and I died of typhoid, I think.  That's the first thing I thought of when I saw this thread. :smileywink: )

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I remember that game well!

Book sounds very interesting OP.

[Kachina624]

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@azgal wrote:

Sounds like a good book. 

I've been to the Oregon Trail Interpretive center in Baker City Oregon. Very interesting. You can even see the old ruts from the wagons.

@Kachina624 I read a really good book" Conversations with Pioneer Women". It's the oral history of Pacific Northwest women. A newspaper reporter interviewed these women late in their lives. It's an old book and may be hard to find. I found it at Powell's books in Portland which is huge. It's a city block! 

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@azgal  Thanks,  I'll add it to my reading list.  Sounds like it's right up my alley.  I enjoyed the book Tom Boy Bride by Harriet Backus.  It's about the wife of an engineer who worked at the Tom Boy Mine in Colorado years ago.  You can visit the site of that mine today if you have a jeep and lots of courage.  I hear it's a wild ride.

[Another new name Sue]

It's fascinating to learn about the pioneers, and the book sounds wonderful. I would have liked to do something like that.

I just wonder how the women, in particular, with physical challenges such as expecting a baby and having a couple others in tow, walking all day in who knows what kind of shoes and then cooking dinner over an open fire.  Whew.  And I complain about ironing!!

If you search "pioneer women" on Amazon, there is a number of books about these women, diaries too. 

[azgal]

@Kachina624  That sounds like an interesting book. I visited a mine in Bisbee Az but it wasn't a wild ride. Don't know if I could handle that. 

[Kachina624]

@azgal  I have several Indian-made pieces of turquoise jewelry that came from the Bisbee Mine.  Wasn't it an open pit mine that has been backfilled?  The gold and silver mines were underground.

[Maudelynn]

This sounds like a great read.  Thanks for posting!  I'm also a fan of covered wagon stories and have read quite a few, some, as someone posted upthread, were based on diary entries of pioneer women.  I can't imagine the heat and dirt and exhaustion. Finding drinking water for the animals was always forefront in the pioneers' minds.  Clothes were washed in a tub that hitched to the bottom of the wagon, rocks and water were added and the swaying of the wagon cleaned the clothes.  Butter was sometimes made this way too.  Very interesting tid bits, for sure.

Thanks again for the recommendation.