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If you spent hours playing The Oregon Trail on the computer back in the day, there’s probably one sentence you’ve seen a lot: “You have died of dysentery.” But what are the things we get WRONG about the infamous trail? In this episode of Misconceptions, host Justin Dodd debunks myths about the Oregon Trail. So grab your food, ammunition, and spare wagon parts, and let's get rolling. Don't miss a video! Subscribe NOW: https://www.youtube.com/@MentalFloss?sub_confirmation=1 About Mental Floss: Mental Floss is where curious people come for trivia-tastic information. Mental Floss produces lists of fun facts, debunks common misconceptions, and tells untold stories from history, science, culture and more. Website: http://www.mentalfloss.com Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mental_floss Facebook: https://facebook.com/mentalflossmagazine Discord: https://discord.io/mentalfloss Copyright Notice: This video and YouTube channel contain dialog, music, and images that are property of Mental Floss. You are authorized to share the video link and channel, and embed this video in your website or others as long as a link back to this YouTube Channel is provided. 2025 Mental Floss Misconceptions About the Oregon Trail | Mental Floss https://www.youtube.com/@MentalFloss
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If you, like me, have spent hours playing the Oregon Trail on the computer
0:04
there's probably one sentence you've seen a lot. You have died of dysentery
0:08
Nostalgia lovers can buy t-shirts, mugs, pins, and plenty more hot merch with that phrase
0:13
If you travel back to the real Oregon Trail in the 1800s, leave your dysentery merch behind
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That's going to hit a little close to home for the travelers who've seen what the disease can
0:22
really do. People usually caught dysentery when they drank bad water on the Oregon Trail
0:26
It's a gastrointestinal disease that can lead to death. And it wasn't the only disease to avoid on the trail
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People got cholera, typhoid, malaria, diphtheria, even scurvy. It's not to mention all the deathly accidents like drowning or getting run over by a wagon
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I could go on. But it is a misconception that death was looming around every corner
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Real Oregon Trail travelers were much better at staying alive than 10-year-old me playing the game
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Of the hundreds of thousands of emigrants, an estimated 4-10% died. so the vast majority of people made it through
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Good for them. My friends and I would have been very happy with a 90% win rate in the computer lab
1:04
Hi, I'm Justin Dodd, and welcome to Misconceptions. Grab your food, ammunition, and spare wagon parts
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because today we're debunking myths about the Oregon Trail. Let's get started. The Oregon Trail was used by Americans
1:23
who wanted to travel west to the new country. Besides some super early adopters, people really started taking it in the 1840s and continued to use it through the 1880s
1:32
They'd acquire a wagon, load up on supplies, and bring their families along on the months-long journey
1:38
Some estimates say half a million people used the Oregon Trail. In fact, it was so well-traveled that to this day, you can still see wagon ruts in all the states it went through
1:46
What are the things we get wrong about the infamous trail? The Oregon Trail was a single trail travelers took to go west
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People generally refer to the Oregon Trail when they're talking about the around 2,000-mile
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pilgrimage between Independence, Missouri and Oregon City. The standard route went through
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Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon. But this wasn't just a single path that
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all wagons took to get to one endpoint. The trail changed from year to year depending on things like
2:15
weather and wagon traffic. And as people got to know the land better, some shortcuts popped up
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that travelers used In Wyoming especially many different options emerged Over the years two shortcuts ended up being so effective that they became part of the main route one in southwestern Wyoming and another in northern Oregon With shortcuts came risks though The infamous Donner party got a late start on their journey
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out west and was attempting to take one called the Hastings Cutoff, when they got trapped in
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the Sierra Nevada mountains due to record snows and had to resort to, well, desperate measures to
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survive. Cannibalism. It was cannibalism. You can also imagine that people didn't want to ride
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single file through the Great Plains. With all that space, that would have been a baffling choice
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There was room to spread out, and they did. Two wagons traveling the Oregon Trail could
3:02
technically be headed to the same place, but miles apart from each other. And many of them
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weren't even headed to the same place. Plenty had no interest in Oregon specifically. Only around
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80,000 people actually settled in the Willamette Valley, which people tend to call the Oregon Trail's
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endpoint. Other travelers branched out to different routes to get to California or modern-day Utah
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And similarly, people were coming from all sorts of places other than Independence, Missouri. So
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as the years went on, the Oregon Trail accommodated people hopping on from many different spots
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and where you left from affected the route that you'd take. Rather than a single path
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you can think of the Oregon Trail as a kind of western moving web. Emigrants hunted for buffalo, and if they didn't, they went hungry
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If you played the computer game, you hunted for food to survive. Buffalo and deer were the big
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ticket items, and they were pretty critical to making it to the Willamette Valley and winning
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the game. In the early years of the trail, this was more accurate. There were plenty of buffalo
4:00
and people in wagon trains might hunt and kill them every day on the plains. But it was important
4:04
to have actual hunters in the group. From the earliest days, we have women's diaries that
4:09
described their husbands as, frankly, terrible hunters. Often these were farmers who didn't have
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much hunting experience at all. Luckily, trade with local indigenous people for fish and meat
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was always an option. And by the 1850s, buffalo herds were already thinning. They were overhunted
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Plus, they migrated away from the areas where they were getting shot at daily. I mean, wouldn't you
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By the 1860s, some travelers' diaries didn't even mention buffalo at all. And by the mid-1880s
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only about 325 wild buffalo were left in the United States. Thankfully, as the game taught us
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people were encouraged to bring many pounds of food. The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California
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a guidebook from 1845, recommends stocking up on between and worth of food including 200 pounds of flour 150 pounds of bacon and 20 pounds of sugar And that in 1800s dollars People also brought along dried fruit beans rice cornmeal
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and lots more to munch on. So it wasn't an all-buffalo diet. It was an isolated journey
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It's easy to picture the travel days as peaceful solo treks through the country
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but at the peak of the Oregon Trail era, you probably wouldn't have made it a mile
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without seeing other people. Sometimes wagons stretched all the way to the horizon
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People typically joined wagon trains, which I mentioned earlier. These could be made up of hundreds of wagons
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Miriam Thompson, whose journey began in May 1845, started out in a train with 480 wagons
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These wagon trains were led by people who helped make decisions about things like how to handle river crossings
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And when there were flooded rivers, bad weather, or bad trail conditions
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there might be literal wagon traffic jams and no podcasts. to kill the time either. Just imagine having to sit there and wait while you listen to Charles
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brag about how many buffalo he's hunted when you know he ran away the first time he saw the shadow
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of a tree and never looked back. As more people used the trail, more forts and outposts were added
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alongside it. At forts, people could get food, medicine, and other supplies. The people operating
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Fort Kearney in present-day Nebraska and Fort Laramie in Wyoming kept track of how many people
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pass through. It could be hundreds in a single day. Also, as the years went on, the trail contained
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lots of evidence of people, like the trash they left along the way. There was a lot of trash
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especially because some unethical merchants in Missouri started tricking travelers into buying
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way more supplies than they needed. Think of it like the original Prime Day. You definitely don't
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need that blanket that looks like a tortilla or that toaster for hot dogs, but you get caught up
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the moment. I get it. Anyway, by the mid-1850s, Salt Lake City had anything a person might need
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including even bathhouses and barbershops. And by 1861, telegraph poles serviced the entire length
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of the trail. The travelers could even stay in touch with family back home
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People rode west in big Conestoga wagons pulled by horses. Those wagons were more common between 1820 and 1840. They were used on the east coast to move
7:07
goods from place to place, but they were too big and heavy to make the long journey west
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Emigrants were already bringing up to 2,500 pounds of stuff with them, so they didn't need their
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wagon to be heavy too Instead most people used lighter prairie schooners which could more effectively carry a lot of weight over the uneven trail Prairie Schooners got their name because the white tops kind of look like sails from far away Confusingly Conestoga wagons are also often compared to boats because they had round boat
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beds. Can't wagons just be wagons and boats be boats? Anyway, Prairie Schooners were flat on the
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bottom, and they were typically pulled by oxen or mules. Men generally didn't ride in the wagon at
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all. They walked or rode on horses. Sometimes women rode in the wagons, but the trail was pretty bumpy
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so walking or horseback riding may have been preferable. Prairie schooners weren't the only
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option either. Some people just had hand carts for their belongings, and in the later years
8:02
some rode in stagecoaches. Most immigrants were impoverished individuals who'd never left home
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This is actually something the game gets right. In it, you get to choose your occupation. You could
8:14
be a banker, a doctor, farmer, merchant, or something else from a long list of choices
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But still, it's easy to look back on these 19th century days and think of moving west
8:24
as something people in poverty did to try to claw their way up the class chain. In reality
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if you wanted to take the Oregon Trail, you usually needed significant funds. We've already
8:34
talked about the food, hunting supplies, and the wagon. People were also encouraged to bring plenty
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more like tools, ovens, kettles, hatchets, bedding, clothes for all conditions, and so on. It's
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estimated that in 1850 it would cost the family $800 to $1,200 to acquire everything they needed
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for their time on the trail. That's about $32,000 to $48,000 in today's money. This simply wasn't
8:58
feasible for the poorest people in the United States, and many of those who did go were land
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owners who saved up for years and still had to sell their land and a lot of their belongings to
9:08
be able to afford it. In Lillian Schlissel's book Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey
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she calls the typical Oregon Trail journeyers peasant proprietors. They usually had own land
9:18
in the east and they would become landowners again once they landed in the west. As time went on
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it became more common to see wealthy people on the trail. Sometimes they even brought staff to cook
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and deal with the animals. Most of the immigrants had also moved before, usually brought somewhere
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by their parents when they were young. So this wasn't even a totally new experience either. They
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They knew what traveling and starting fresh looked like
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