Ross A. Smith

Oregon Voices

The Southern Route Revisited

In the mid-1840s, the lure of free land brought thousands of emigrants over the Oregon Trail into the Willamette Valley. To accommodate the influx and encourage settlement in the valley, the settler community sought an overland wagon route that would avoid the treacherous journey down the Columbia River between The Dalles and Fort Vancouver.¹ In 1846, two new routes opened for wagon travel. The first was the Barlow Road, an extension of the regular route that stretched over more than a hundred miles and passed through what is now northern Oregon. Operated as a toll road by Sam Barlow, the route brought emigrants safely from The Dalles over the south face of Mt. Hood and into the Willamette Valley. Nearly all of the emigrants who used this route in 1846 reached the Willamette Valley by mid-October.²

An exploring party from Polk County, Oregon, discovered the second route. The Southern Route — or the Applegate Trail, after Jesse Applegate, the party's leader — proceeded south from Fort Hall along the California Trail, then cut northwest through what is now Nevada into the Klamath Basin and over the Siskiyou Mountains to eventually enter the Willamette Valley from the south. The emigrants who followed the Southern Route that first year suffered starvation and loss of property, and a dozen or more died. Many did not reach the Willamette Valley settlements until early 1847, when they were rescued by relief parties from the settlements.

Members of the exploring party and later observers and historians have suggested various causes for the delays and suffering. Some relate to conditions encountered along the trail, such as the quality of the roadway, the availability of grass and water, harassment by Native Americans, and weather. Some have placed the blame on the emigrants themselves — their general character, industriousness, and diligence in traveling and the quality of their teams. All of these factors played a role, but the suitability of the roadway for wagon travel was probably the most significant.

This scene along the Rogue River near Merlin, Oregon, shows the type of landscape that emigrants who took the Southern Route in 1846 might have encountered as they moved through southern Oregon.

OHS neg., OrHi 105014

The reminiscence of Levi Scott, who led the emigrants of 1846 over the new route, provides important insights into the causes of problems the emigrants on the Southern Route encountered. Almost fifty years old at the time the route was inaugurated, Scott had led one of the companies in the 1844 Oregon Trail migration. He was a tireless and resourceful leader who by all accounts was respected by both his fellow explorers and the emigrants. Scott wrote his life story in the 1880s in collaboration with Judge James Layton Collins, who had formed a lifetime friendship with Scott when Collins traveled the Southern Route in 1846 as a thirteen-year-old boy. Copies of the autobiography had circulated in the 1960s, but Scott's story was unavailable to Oregon Trail historians such as Dale Morgan and John D. Unruh, Jr. In the mid-1990s, the original manuscript was discovered in the possession of Collins's descendants in Alaska and returned to Polk County.³

The fifteen members of the Southern Route exploring party departed from Rickreall Creek near present-day Dallas in late June 1846 and proceeded southward on horseback along a trail that ran down the interior valley between the Coast and Cascade mountain ranges (roughly following the route of present-day Highways 99W and 99E) and had been used by Hudson's Bay Company fur trappers.⁴ After traversing the virtually impassable Canyon Creek Canyon in the Umpqua valley and the mountains of southwestern Oregon, the explorers turned off the trappers' route near present-day Ashland. Following a map made by Hudson's Bay Company explorer Peter Ogden, the party crossed the eastern end of the Siskiyou Mountains and proceeded eastward, searching for a connecting link that would take them to the well-established California Trail, which followed the Humboldt River much of the way between the Sierra Nevada and Fort Hall. Having traveled through the northwestern Nevada desert during the hottest days of summer, the exploring party and their horses were exhausted and nearly dying of thirst by the time they arrived at the Humboldt River, one month after they set out. Still, they had discovered a link between the old trappers' trail and the California Trail and had located a new route that could allow emigrants to bring their wagons over the Cascades and into the Willamette Valley from the south.

Five members of the party — Jesse Applegate, David Goff, Moses "Black" Harris, John Owens, and Henry Boygus — continued quickly on to Fort Hall to replenish supplies and to attempt to intercept Oregon-bound emigrants and notify them of their achievement. Levi Scott and the remaining explorers proceeded at a slower pace up the Humboldt River to its headwaters near Thousand Springs. There they waited for the other members of the group to return from Fort Hall with any emigrants they could persuade to accompany them before setting out for Oregon.

The Oregon Trail, showing the northern route and the Southern Route

Used with the permission of the Oregon-California Trails Association, Independence, Missouri

Applegate and his group were successful. Between ninety and one hundred family wagons joined the company. A small group of men traveled ahead as a road-building party, and small parties of wagons were loosely organized into at least two large companies, with Levi Scott and David Goff serving as guides. The wagons may have been strung out by as much as two weeks or more as they began turning off the California Trail into the Black Rock Desert of present-day northwestern Nevada in early September. According to emigrant chronicler J. Quinn Thornton, Jesse Applegate had promised emigrants at Fort Hall that his shorter route would have them in the Willamette Valley settlements "as early as the first of October."⁵ On October 3, the lead company of wagons camped on the Klamath River near today's Keno, Oregon — about 240 miles from their destination. By then, most of the road-building party had arrived in the Willamette Valley settlements.

More than any other factor, the success of the inaugural trip along the Southern Route depended on having a road that would allow emigrants to get their wagons and their belongings to the Willamette Valley before the fall rains set in. On their first exploration of the route in June, Jesse Applegate's party had satisfied themselves that a road could be made through the country they traversed, but they had not actually marked the road.⁶ The question of who was responsible for ensuring that the road was adequately prepared is a matter of controversy. In his reminiscence, Scott reported that before Jesse Applegate left for Fort Hall the explorers had carefully estimated that they would need thirty adequately equipped men for clearing the road. According to Scott, the exploring party agreed that Applegate would show the estimate to the emigrants at Fort Hall; and if the number of emigrants willing to try the new route was inadequate, Applegate's group would not encourage any of them to take the Southern Route.⁷

When Harris and Goff returned to Thousand Springs with the first fourteen wagons, Scott learned that the emigrants had not been told that they were required to provide road workers. In fact, the emigrants had expected the route to be ready for travel. The next day, seven more wagons came into camp with a note from Applegate expressing his confidence that he would be able to raise the required number of road workers. Applegate told Scott to start the wagons moving and explained that he would meet the train in a few days. When Applegate caught up with the group, Scott was "astonished" to see only five or six road workers accompanying him. Scott later admitted he "shuddered" at the thought of going forward with so few road workers, but wagons were pressing in on them from the rear and the emigrants had come too far to turn back.⁸ David Goff's son-in-law, James Nesmith, remembered: "The immigrants were told it would require much labor to open the road — that the Umpqua mountains alone would require the labor of 20 men for 10 days to make it passable...."⁹

Eligible road workers — generally, able-bodied men from sixteen to sixty years old — would have had to come from families that included men not otherwise occupied driving wagon teams. More often than not, however, families traveling the Oregon Trail had too few drivers for the number of wagons they had, and they hired on additional young men as teamsters before they set off on the trail. It was probably unrealistic for the exploring party to assume that there would be enough men available to join an advance road-working party.

The number of men who eventually made up the road-building party and the extent to which they were drawn from the emigrants or the exploring party is unclear. Of the original fifteen explorers, three — Scott and Goff, who accompanied the emigrant train, and Boygus, who left them at Fort Hall — were unavailable. This should have left twelve explorers available for road working, in addition to any emigrants who could be drafted. Scott later reported, however, that a total of twelve men formed the road party, including members of the exploring party and emigrants.¹⁰ Lindsay Applegate later wrote that there were twenty-one road workers, including nine emigrants, plus a Bannock Indian.¹¹ Joseph Burke, a botanist who joined the company at Fort Hall, stated that "with Mr. Applegate's party and some young men from the wagons, which came to clear the coast where it was absolutely required — we numbered 24."¹² If Burke's count was accurate, the road-building party was only six men short of the original estimate of thirty and should have been able to complete the work in about 20 percent more time than was first anticipated.

When scott agreed to guide the emigrants, it was with the understanding that the road-building party led by Jesse Applegate would mark the course of the road.¹³ According to Scott, however, he had "the unexpected and laborious task" of

searching out in advance of the wagons the particular track to be pursued, which sometimes caused delay, and imposed upon me, constantly, an immense amount of work.... There were many natural land marks that I remembered by which I could usually keep my course, but there were a multitude of obstacles to the convenient passage of wagons which had escaped my attention in first passing through the country, which now met me.... I was compelled to look out for these things, and to avoid them in the best way I could, which kept me constantly going and coming.¹⁴

As the lead wagons got under way, Scott periodically reconnoitered the best route for the wagons. Sometimes this could be done when the emigrants were in camp for the night or had stopped to camp early or departed later in the morning. Often the train had to be stopped entirely until the route ahead could be found. The delays imposed an "immense" amount of additional work on Scott and any emigrants who joined the reconnaissance parties and also contributed to the overall fatigue of the travelers and their mounts.¹⁵

Scott had expected Applegate's road party to mark out the entire route in some way — by blazing a trail, riding their animals over the route to pack it down, or leaving notes of instruction. As it was, Scott reportedly found only one note, and apparently it did little good. He later described laying up for two days at that point to refresh their teams and "to give me an opportunity to go forward and examine the country and select the best way for a road." He complained that Applegate's road party "pushed on, doing but little to aid those behind them," until they came to the heavy forests of the Siskiyou Mountains. There, Scott wrote, the road party had blazed the route, but they had done little clearing of the roadway, "where a great deal of work ought to have been done."¹⁶ Time and again, the emigrants were forced to stop the wagon train to build the road ahead. On October 10, Virgil Pringle wrote that after crossing over the Siskiyou Mountains they spent a whole day traveling only three miles and "found a tolerable route at last." Three days later, shortly after reaching the old trappers' trail, they spent the day exploring ahead, "the road not being marked."¹⁷

Scott later described his and the emigrants' displeasure with the road party, but he also explained that the emigrants' outrage was not entirely warranted. Regardless of whether or not the exploring party had marked the route, the emigrants should have known they would have to clear much of the road. By necessity this work would fall on the wagon drivers, because all the other available young men had already joined the road party. At the beginning of the journey, Scott stated the underlying problem: "Some of the emigrants seemed to think me under obligations to furnish them a good, easy road, with plenty of grass and water all the way through. These demands were extravagant and foolish, for they knew as well as I did that there was no road at all till we should make it." The emigrants' unrealistic expectations may have stemmed from comments made by members of the exploring party. According to Scott, at the mouth of Goose Creek in present-day Idaho, Harris and Goff told the emigrants "they could drive right along into Oregon on this new route without any trouble at all."¹⁸ Thornton claimed that Jesse Applegate had told the emigrants at Fort Hall that "the road was generally smooth."¹⁹ Applegate also posted a waybill at Fort Hall claiming the road would be opened at the expense of the citizens of Oregon and that "nothing whatever [will be] demanded of the emigrants."²⁰

Scott did not hold Applegate entirely responsible for the lack of a prepared roadbed, offering that Applegate had traveled ahead of the road-building party either to blaze out the road or to reach the Willamette Valley settlements and recruit more workers. In Applegate's defense, Scott explained that Applegate had left the supervision of the road party to someone who "did not, perhaps, take the necessary pains to carry out his instructions." He added that the "man in charge ... was to proceed more slowly, and to open and put the way in good condition for the passage of the wagons." He "failed to do as it should have been done, and in many of the most difficult places he neglected to do, altogether."²¹

By early October, the wagons reached what Scott called the "dense timber country" of the Siskiyou Mountains. There they "relied on Captain Applegate and his party of hands to open the road through the timber, and they had done but little besides blazing it out." The wagon train was forced to camp in heavy timber without food or water "on account of the delays in working on the road." Once they crossed the Siskiyous and arrived in the Rogue River Valley, Scott remembered that the "toil and suffering of the people since we crossed the Klamath river had been very great." In many places, emigrants had to use ropes to keep the wagons from upsetting, which, combined with other difficulties, "rendered our progress slow and extremely laborious."²²

"The second day after we crossed the Rogue River," Scott recounted, "we came to a place where the road cutters had done nothing," and the wagons had to stop while Scott looked for a route and the emigrants cut their way through the forest. Starting into the mountains, "we reached a place where the road cutters had again done nothing, and we were compelled to stop and cut our way through to the open ground beyond,... working all the available force of the company."²³ On October 20, Pringle wrote that the "route continues over spurs of mountains, with steep pulls and thick timber and underbrush."²⁴

Scott reported taking "three days of hard labor" to work their way through the "very rough timbered hills" before they reached Canyon Creek Canyon. There they met Jack Jones, who had gone ahead with Applegate and returned with a few cattle. He was accompanied by settler Tom Smith, who told the emigrants "that it would be impossible for them to go through the Umpqua Canyon with wagons." Scott finally convinced the emigrants to attempt the canyon, telling them that the wagon train "could go no further without first having made a road through this formidable gorge," which he considered "the worst ten miles for a road I ever saw." Scott had observed earlier that the "impenetrable gorge" was full of "bushes which grew so densely that a man could not crawl through among them. And there were great quantities of logs and boulders choking up the pass, which would have to be removed in opening a [wagon] road."²⁵ According to Pringle, it took the company five days to go five miles, "working the road through the pass, which is nearly impassable." It took another five days to cover sixteen miles and get through the canyon "after a series of hardships, break-downs and being constantly wet and laboring hard and very little to eat."²⁶

Exploring party member Levi Scott, who guided the Southern Route emigrants over most of the journey into the Willamette Valley.

OHS neg., OrHi 104962

The final obstacle before reaching the Willamette Valley was another mountain passage. Scott recounted: "I knew the general course we must go, but knew little, in detail, of the ground we must travel over.... But there had not yet been a stick cut, nor a blaze made."²⁷ Pringle reported having helped "finish the road and complete the pass of the mountains...."²⁸

Although Lindsay Applegate wrote that the road party had removed all of the "greatest difficulties" before they returned to the settlements, it appears that they did little actual clearing of the road beyond the point where the Southern Route rejoined the old trappers' trail near present-day Ashland.²⁹ According to Burke, it took the road party only five days to cover roughly 120 miles from their encampment on the Rogue River on September 15 to their encampment in the mountains south of present-day Eugene on September 20.³⁰ This meant they were covering 24 miles per day, which, considering the terrain, was a good clip even on horseback. In contrast, Pringle reported that it took the lead wagons thirty-seven days — from October 14 to November 20 — to cover the same ground.³¹ The wagons took over seven times longer, averaging only 3 miles per day. To travel at such a fast pace, the road party would have had to follow the narrow pack trail running along the rim of the mountainside high above Canyon Creek Canyon, and party members would not have had time to build a road in the canyon itself. Jesse Applegate later claimed that the road-building party, "being in want of the necessary tools, and scarce of provisions, were unable to make this road properly, and attempted only to make it passable with as little labor as possible."³²

James and Elizabeth Smith, the author's great-great-grandparents, who were among the emigrants who took the Southern Route in 1846.

Courtesy of Ross A. Smith

For at least 150 miles, the emigrants had to clear a substantial portion of the roadway ahead as they went along — from the beginning of the old trappers' trail to their entrance into the Willamette Valley. This was probably the main cause of their slow progress from early October to late November.

Scott also described how the character of the emigrants contributed to the party's problems. "Those who had turned aside to follow us," he wrote, "were the extreme rear of the emigration, and a large percentage of them had poor teams, and were more slothful and indolent men than those who had pressed forward and gone on, down the Snake river, before we could meet them. We were frequently detained for an hour or two by some man being slow and careless about getting ready to start."³³ In fact, emigrants' positions in a wagon train were more often related to their point of departure. Virtually all of the wagons that ended up taking the Southern Route had departed from Independence, Missouri. Most of the parties ahead of them had left from St. Joseph, Missouri, a nearer point of departure. Had most of those in the rear of the 1846 wagon train been there due to the indolence of their drivers or poor quality of their teams, as Scott suggests, then they likely would have fallen even farther behind as the wagons moved along.

Jesse Applegate also blamed the delays on the emigrants. In a letter to his brother dated October 11, 1847, Applegate claimed that "the emigrants who traveled the Southern rout [sic] to Oregon did badly for want of energy and diligence in traveling they were caught by the rains of unusual severity."³⁴

While Scott gives no specific examples of carelessness among the emigrants, he does describe their industriousness. As the party came around the west side of Lower Klamath Lake, they encountered a steep, overhanging precipice. The emigrants persuaded Scott to try double-teaming the wagons so as to "cross the ridge in less time than it would take to avoid it." Thornton reported that they put "eighteen to twenty-three yoke of oxen to each wagon," and Scott remembered the hillside being covered with wagons, oxen, and people in a scene that resembled "the fighting of a great battle." In "an incredibly short space of time," the whole train was looking down on the lake from the promontory above.³⁵

Despite such reports, the charges of sloth linger in the historical record. Hubert Howe Bancroft, for example, claimed that the emigrants "wasted" a full week after their time-saving accomplishment at Lower Klamath Lake. He likewise claimed that some of the emigrants loitered to avoid sharing the labor of road making and reported that after they crossed the Siskiyous and entered the Rogue River Valley, "being extremely weary, and their teams wellnigh exhausted, the last of the families unfortunately lingered too long in this beautiful country.... And alas! they tarried in the valley until the rains began."³⁶ Francis Fuller Victor charged that those who turned off onto the new route "after passing through the sage deserts, committed the error of stopping to recruit their cattle and horses in the fresh green valleys among the foothills of the mountains. It did not occur to them," she continued, "that they were wasting precious time in this way; but to this indulgence was owing an incredible amount of suffering."³⁷

The question of whether the emigrants were slothful can be partially addressed by considering their rate of travel. Pringle reported taking fifty-six days to cover 746 miles from Fort Hall to the point near present-day Keno, Oregon, where the party stopped on October 3. This was an average rate of almost 13 miles per day (Thornton said Applegate had told them they would have to travel 12 to 13 miles per day to arrive in the settlements by October 1.)³⁸ This was faster than the 10 miles per day that the 1843 emigrants had achieved over their first 500 miles.³⁹ During the period that Bancroft and Victor refer to — after the party entered the Rogue River Valley — the pace slowed to 3 miles per day because of the terrain and the lack of a road. Still, Pringle's diary shows that the party traveled nearly every day from the time they emerged from the Black Rock Desert on September 9 until November 11. During this period, the party made no progress on only three days, when they were resting their teams, recovering stolen stock, or improving the road.⁴⁰

Scott also complained that the emigrants were "the most difficult crowd to manage I ever got into."

Although they usually treated me with becoming deference and respect, sometimes they would not follow my directions and suggestions, which almost invariably resulted in some hindrance and embarrassment to the whole company. I sometimes felt like I ought to kick myself for being so stupid, as to board myself and work for nothing in all of these hazardous and laborious efforts to serve the interests of such an insolent and ungrateful crowd.⁴¹

Scott had met such resistance before. Remembering the emigrants that he had led on the 1844 wagon train, he wrote:

By the time we reached the crossing of the South Fork of the Platte, nearly every person in the train was more or less dissatisfied. Some complained of the Captain, some murmured against one man, and some against another. When we would lay by a day to rest the teams, the children would fall out, and quarrel with each other. Some of the women disagreed and gossiped about each other, and sometimes they quarreled because their children quarreled. Some of the men were always finding fault, first with one thing and then with another till it seemed like the Devil had broken loose among us.⁴²

Scott acknowledged, however, that once the emigrants became aware of the danger of the situation they were in, they began to follow his lead: "After a while they began to obey my directions without talking back, or questioning the wisdom, or propriety of them. Had it not been that they improved in this respect,... I feel confident that the suffering would have been much greater than it was."⁴³

Historian Lloyd W. Coffman characterized the emigrants of 1843 as "fiercely independent individuals" who were "difficult people to lead."⁴⁴ If the Southern Route emigrants were unmanageable, they may have been the rule rather than the exception.

The emigrants' weakened teams also slowed the party's progress. The first three or four hundred miles of the route followed the Humboldt River through comparatively level, barren, rocky desert country, with sage up to eight or ten feet high, which, according to Scott, "was very hard on the teams."⁴⁵ When they turned off the California Trail onto the Southern Route, they had to cross the Black Rock Desert, which was nearly desolate of water and grass for the oxen.⁴⁶ According to Thornton, Applegate had told the emigrants that the Black Rock Desert was only thirty miles across.⁴⁷ On September 6, Pringle reported traveling fifteen miles to reach a weak spring, having supper at four in the afternoon, giving their cattle what water they could get, and moving on. They then traveled another nineteen miles before reaching a second, weaker spring, at four in the morning. After sleeping and resting until nine that morning, they continued across the desert, "our stock weak and working badly, getting very little water and nothing to eat." Pringle reported that the party traveled another twenty-one miles before reaching Black Rock shortly after eight on the evening of September 7.⁴⁸

A drawing of Jesse Applegate as he appeared in 1843, done from memory in 1908 by Applegate's nephew

OHS neg., OrHi 45

After going forty-eight straight hours without water or grass, the oxen were in poor condition. "Some cattle had already perished," Thornton recounted. "Mr. [James] Crump's team was so reduced that it became necessary to send aid back to him.... Some of our cattle perished in the desert, and all that survived were greatly injured. And now that we had got to water, it was greatly impregnated with mixed alkaline salts, that made it unfit for use...."⁴⁹ Pringle offered a similar story: "Left 2 steers belonging to [Smith] Collins on the road, they being too week to come in, several others barely getting through."⁵⁰ Historian Dale Morgan concluded that "most teams traveling this route were worn down by the deserts just crossed."⁵¹

The emigrants' situation seemed to improve as they emerged from the Nevada desert country and began winding through the lakes of the Klamath Basin. The cattle were occasionally put into hard service, notably when multiple teams were hitched to wagons in order to get around the precipice near Lower Klamath Lake and during the heavy pulls over the Siskiyou Mountains. Upon reaching the summit of the first range, Thornton reported that the effort "was itself labor almost enough to break down fresh and strong teams, much more such as ours were, worn down and exhausted, in consequence of long privation." By the next day, "most of the teams were pretty well worn down by it." Early the next morning, Thornton told of the collapse of one of his oxen, who sank down in the road to die:

We continued to hurry forward over this rough mountain ridge, as though we were sensible that the Angel of Death was close behind us. Early in the afternoon another ox, faint, and exhausted, sank down; him, too, I left to die.... We had not proceeded more than half a mile, when it was evident that the wreck of my team could no longer take forward my wagon.

Thornton left his wagon and most of his belongings on the mountain. A fellow taveler took on some of his supplies, and another agreed to carry Thornton's clothing in exchange for exclusive ownership of his remaining two oxen. Thornton and his wife were left with the prospect of having to walk the remaining 250 miles of the journey.⁵²

The emigrants were also plagued with real and perceived threats from Native Americans along the route. Historian John Unruh explains that emigrant-Indian interaction along the Oregon–California Trail was frequently beneficial to both parties and was generally characterized by "aid and trade." "The southern, or Applegate, route to Oregon," however, "was probably the single most dangerous stretch of the overland trail."⁵³ Thornton reported troubles with Indians along the length of the Humboldt River, including cattle rustling, an ambush, and the death of a man who was shot by a poisoned arrow.⁵⁴ Scott later reported being attacked by Indians before leaving the California Trail when he was helping a member of the road party recover a stolen horse. As Scott vaulted into his saddle, he was struck by an arrow in the right groin and another struck his horse in the right thigh. Scott's horse recovered in a week or so, and Scott's wound improved after a few days.⁵⁵

Another incident occurred on about September 19, before the party reached Goose Lake in the Klamath Basin. Pringle reported that one of his oxen and two cattle that belonged to others were shot with arrows.⁵⁶ A.E. Garrison recalled the same incident more dramatically: "the Indians made a break on us, killing several head of our cattle and driving off quite a number, leaving many wagons almost without a team, here my friend Mr. [Robert] Lancefield lost several of his oxen...." Lancefield had to replace his oxen with cows for the remainder of the journey.⁵⁷

Both Pringle and Scott wrote about Indians stealing cattle on September 29, and Scott specified that four head of oxen were stolen and several others wounded with arrows.⁵⁸ Several men went in pursuit of the stolen oxen and found them slaughtered near the Klamath Lake tules. Pringle wrote that the Indians drove off a number of cattle during the night, "owing to the inefficiency of our guard." He added that the emigrants spent an entire day trying to recover them and by the next morning had found all but ten.⁵⁹ As they reached the old trappers' trail, Scott told of fifty sheep being run off before breakfast. The emigrants put out a strong guard, with instructions to fire off a gun every fifteen minutes at night, so the Indians would know they were watching.⁶⁰

Scott summarized the emigrants' situation as being "in a state of quasi-siege" for most of the journey.⁶¹ This feeling led the emigrants to follow an almost military-like discipline and added to their fearfulness and unease. It also led to delays, loss of livestock, and even death. Probably more importantly, the strain of driving oxen, clearing the road, and staying up all night on guard duty gradually took its toll on the effectiveness of a company that was already stretched too thin.

The primary drawback of the Southern Route has drawn little notice from historians. Dale Morgan and John Unruh mentioned that the Southern Route was longer than the northern, but they did not elaborate. Comparing the distance from Fort Hall over both routes, geographer Richard Rieck found that the northern route, whether it went down the Columbia River or followed the Barlow Road, was 730 miles, while the Southern Route was 985 miles — over a third longer.⁶² At an average speed of 12 to 15 miles per day, the 255-mile difference would mean that the Southern Route required up to an additional three weeks of travel.

Even before the first group of emigrants reached the Willamette Valley settlements, debate began about what had gone wrong on the Southern Route. John Unruh summed up the central issue: "Several of the emigrants, most notably Jessy Quinn Thornton, complained bitterly that the Applegates, acting from selfish motives, had deliberately falsified facts in order to entice emigrants onto the new road. Applegate had certainly misrepresented the length of the new route (the old route was shorter), but whether willfully or not is unclear."⁶³ Thornton claimed that Applegate had told them his cut-off was "at least 200 miles less" than the regular route.⁶⁴ Although it would have been difficult to estimate the length of the route, Applegate had been trained as a surveyor in Missouri and should have been more accurate. The error seems too great to have been inadvertent.

Beginning in late October 1846, the parties involved debated what had gone wrong in a series of editorials and letters to the editor published in Oregon's only newspaper, the Oregon Spectator. Moses "Black" Harris, an exploring party member who had returned early with the road-building party, claimed that the Southern Route was "a shorter and in all respects better route than any heretofore known."⁶⁵ Thornton, who had reached the Polk County settlements in late November by traveling ahead on horseback, criticized the route and defended the emigrants against charges of "WILLFUL delay."⁶⁶ Goff's son-in-law, lawyer James Nesmith, penned an abrasive response under Goff's name, charging Thornton with slander. Nesmith insisted that the delays were due mainly to the emigrants not having been able to spare enough men for building the road: "that the road hunters are to blame for it, none but fools believe or liars assert."⁶⁷ The controversy became so heated that Nesmith challenged Thornton to a public duel.

There is no compelling evidence to support charges that the emigrants who took the Southern Route in 1846 deliberately loitered, were more unmanageable, or were of a lesser character than trail emigrants in general. The accounts by Scott, Thornton, and Pringle indicate that the opposite was closer to the truth. Travel over the Southern Route in 1846 was a high-risk venture, and it required a certain strength of character to survive the hunger and privation to which the emigrants were subjected. Whether the exploring party deliberately misrepresented the length and condition of the route remains unknown, but they did exercise poor judgment in evaluating the quality and length of the route and in inviting families to attempt the journey before an adequate wagon road could be prepared. Whether or not the emigrants were told beforehand that they would be required to help build the road is likewise a cloudy issue. It seems unlikely that the emigrants would have chosen the Southern Route had they known in advance that a passable road had yet to be built and that there were not enough road workers to build it.

The opening of two overland wagon routes into the Willamette Valley in 1846 was a milestone in the eventual settlement of the Pacific Northwest. Unruh reported roughly four thousand emigrants coming to Oregon in 1847, more by far than in any previous year and nearly ten times the number that went to California.⁶⁸ Only a small number of Oregon-bound emigrants traveled the Southern Route in 1847, led once again by Levi Scott. They arrived safely and in good spirits, prompting Scott to proclaim that "the excellence of the southern route was now established beyond a doubt."⁶⁹

The picture changed quickly after 1848 with Mexico's cession of an area that would become the states of California, Nevada, and Utah and parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming to the United States and the discovery of gold in California. California became the favored destination of most western emigrants. The northern route and the Barlow Road extension remained the route of choice for most Oregon-bound emigrants until the transcontinental railroad reached the Pacific Northwest forty years later. Eventually, the Southern Route became an enduring part of the landscape as a valuable link between Oregon and California and a viable access route into southern Oregon.

Notes

^1. Stephen Meek's unsuccessful attempt to find a route through central Oregon in 1845 resulted in great suffering and loss of life. See Donna Wojich, The Brazen Overlanders of 1845 (Portland, Ore.: n.p., 1976), esp. 373–6; Keith Clark and Lowell Tiller, Terrible Trail: The Meek Cutoff, 1845 (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton, 1966), 151.

^2. Sam Barlow, letter to the Oregon Spectator, October 29, 1846, in Dale Morgan, Overland in 1846: Diaries and Letters of the California-Oregon Trail, 2 vols. (1963; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 2:662–3. The Spectator editors noted that seven wagons had yet to arrive in the valley.

^3. Levi Scott, "From Independence to Independence," ed. Judge James Layton Collins, unpublished reminiscence, copy in possession of Arlie Holt, Polk County. See also J. Quinn Thornton, Oregon and California in 1846 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1849); Morgan, Overland in 1846.

^4. See Lindsay Applegate, "Notes and Reminiscences of Laying Out and Establishing the Old Emigrant Road into Southern Oregon in the Year 1846," OCTA Overland Journal 11:1 (1993): 6. See also Morgan, Overland in 1846, 2:638.

^5. Thornton, Oregon and California, 189.

^6. Scott, "From Independence," 120.

^7. Ibid., 114–15.

^8. Ibid., 117–18.

^9. David Goff [actually written by James Nesmith], letter of April 3, 1847 to Oregon Spectator, in Morgan, Overland in 1846, 678–84, quote on 2:682.

^10. Scott, "From Independence," 118.

^11. L. Applegate, "Notes," 17.

^12. Quoted in Morgan, Overland in 1846, 2:767.

^13. Scott had also counted on having the assistance of William Parker, Applegate's brother-in-law, in guiding the wagon train. Because road workers were scarce, Scott instead sent Parker forward to work with the road party.

^14. Ibid., 120–1.

^15. Ibid.

^16. Ibid., 121, 129–30.

^17. Quoted in Morgan, Overland in 1846, 1:184.

^18. Scott, "From Independence," 117, 121.

^19. Thornton, Oregon and California, 162.

^20. Morgan, Overland in 1846, 2:638.

^21. Scott, "From Independence," 120, 137.

^22. Ibid., 137, 138–9.

^23. Ibid., 139.

^24. Quoted in Morgan, Overland in 1846, 1:185.

^25. Scott, "From Independence," 96, 141–2.

^26. Quoted in Morgan, Overland in 1846, 1:185.

^27. Ibid., 148.

^28. Quoted in Morgan, Overland in 1846, 1:187.

^29. L. Applegate, "Notes," 17.

^30. Morgan, Overland in 1846, 2:766–7n.133.

^31. Quoted in Morgan, Overland in 1846, 1:185–7.

^32. Applegate, writing as "Z", Oregon Spectator, March 1847; Morgan, Overland in 1846, 1:74.

^33. Scott, "From Independence," 118.

^34. Quoted in Maude Applegate Rucker, The Oregon Trail and Some of Its Blazers (1914; reprint, New York: W. Neale, 1930), 245.

^35. Thornton, Oregon and California, 190, Scott, "From Independence," 131–2.

^36. Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Oregon, 2 vols. (San Francisco: History Company, 1886–1888), 1:561–3.

^37. Frances Fuller Victor, The River of the West (San Francisco, R.J. Trumbull, 1870), 388.

^38. Thornton, Oregon and California, 189.

^39. Lloyd W. Coffman, Blazing a Wagon Trail to Oregon: A Weekly Chronicle of the Great Migration of 1843 (Enterprise, Ore.: Echo, 1993), 79.

^40. See Pringle's diary entries for September 8 to November 11 in Morgan, Overland in 1846, 1:181–6.

^41. Scott, "From Independence," 119.

^42. Ibid., 55.

^43. Scott, "From Independence," 119.

^44. Coffman, Blazing a Wagon Trail, 31, 91.

^45. Ibid., 120.

^46. Many of the emigrants had experience with desert travel from having taken the forty-two-mile Greenwood (Sublette) Cut-off in the Green River basin in what is now western Wyoming. Thornton described traveling for two days without water or feed for their oxen except what they could carry and relieving their thirsty oxen with one quart of water at a time. Thornton, Oregon and California, 144.

^47. This would have been nearly a third shorter than the Greenwood Cutoff. Ibid., 162.

^48. Quoted in Morgan, Overland in 1846, 1:181. By Pringle's estimate, the emigrants would have traveled fifty-five miles of desert overall. Charles Davis shows the distance at fifty miles. Charles George Davis, Scott-Applegate Trail 1846–1847: Atlas and Gazetteer (North Plains, Ore.: Soap Creek Enterprises, 1995), 42.

^49. Thornton, Oregon and California, 180.

^50. Quoted in Morgan, Overland in 1846, 1:181–2.

^51. Morgan, Overland in 1846, 1:393n67.

^52. Thornton, Oregon and California, 194, 197, 200–201, 205–7. Because of the many ascents and descents involved in crossing the mountains, geographer Richard Rieck found the Southern Route to be more demanding on the oxen than Barlow's toll road over the south face of Mt. Hood. See Richard L. Rieck, "Geography of the Oregon Trail West of Ft. Hall," Overland Journal 17:2 (1999): 20; and Rieck, e-mail communication to author, August 25, 2003.

^53. John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840–60 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979), 156, 185.

^54. Thornton, Oregon and California, 171.

^55. Scott, "From Independence," 122–5.

^56. Quoted in Morgan, Overland in 1846, 1:182..

^57. A.E. Garrison, Life and Labour of Rev. A.E. Garrison: Forty Years in Oregon ... (Salem, Ore.: Elliott Printing House, 1943), 32.

^58. Scott, "From Independence," 110.

^59. Quoted in Morgan, Overland in 1846, 1:183.

^60. Scott, "From Independence," 139.

^61. Ibid., 121; emphasis in original.

^62. Rieck, "Geography of the Oregon Trail," 23; Rieck, e-mail to author, August 23, 2003.

^63. Unruh, Plains Across, 348.

^64. Thornton, Oregon and California, 162.

^65. Moses Harris, letter to editor, November 26, 1846, Oregon Spectator, in Morgan, Overland in 1846, 2:664–6, quote on 665.

^66. Thornton, letter of February 1847 to the Oregon Spectator, in Morgan, Overland in 1846, 2:670–5, emphasis in original. See also Thornton, letter of December 10, 1846, to Oregon Spectator, in Morgan, Overland in 1846, 2:669.

^67. Goff, letter of April 3, 1847, in Morgan, Overland in 1846, 2:682.

^68. Unruh, Plains Across, 119.

^69. Scott, "From Independence," 160.

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