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Emigration

Whites and Indians

Though frontier race relations were complex and even free African Americans were unarguably second-class citizens in comparison to whites, many people ultimately recognized only two kinds of people: “whites” and Indians. The white category…

Free to Own Another Man

The Emancipation Proclamation appears to have been the catalyst that launched the unfortunate slave on a journey to his doom. That spring, according to Owens’ letter, the slave’s master, afraid he would lose his…

Black Population in the West

Exactly how many blacks traversed the continent is unclear, but they were only a tiny fraction of the entire emigration. In 1860, California’s population was 379,994, of which 200,335 traveled overland. There is no…

Black Emigrants Noted in Diaries

The presence of black emigrants who traveled west before the Civil War was an oddity occasionally noted in emigrants’ diaries. Anna Maria Goodell, for example, commented in 1854, “There is a darkey in the company.”…

Territories Reserved for the White Race

Westering Americans believed that overspreading the continent with their yearly multiplying millions was a God-given right, perhaps even pre-ordained. They envisioned a nation of white people extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Renowned…

End of the Overland Era

By 1912, when the last documented wagon trains crested South Pass, as many as 500,000 mostly white individuals had used this great highway.  

Grey-backs

It is a notorious fact that many of the overland stage drivers and stock tenders, between three and four decades ago, were inhabited by a species of vermin known as…

Growth of California

California's white population climbed from about 2,00 in 1848 to 100,000 by 1858. The tiny village of San Francisco, which had 200 residents in 18461 became the official port of entry, and by…

Post Office as Road Builder

Washington, Jefferson, and other forward-thinking politicians had wanted to create a system of decent highways to promote settlement as well as postal service and weave the frontier into the fabric of the mother…

U.S. Population in 1860

In the last year of Democrat James Buchanan's one term as president, about 31.4 million people, including slaves, lived in the United States, according to the census of 1860. But only about…

The Oregon Dragoons

And here at Fort Davy Crockett Wislizenus and the two expilgrims cut the trail of the other group of innocents who had started to settle Oregon this year and were…

Mountain Neurosis

Like Narcissa and Eliza the women were casting the lines that emigrant wives were to follow - botanizing, collecting curious pebbles, gaping at the scenery, putting on their nightgowns and…

Panic of 1836

The bitterest money war in American history and the wildest speculation of the nineteenth century had precipitated the first national depression. The final Specie Circular, Andrew Jackson's broadside at the…

Jason Lee and Oregon in 1834

He met the Flatheads and Nez Perces at Ham's Fork. There is no way of knowing whether disgust or despair moved him chiefly, there is no way of knowing how…

Hunting Buffalo

Stewart may have had many motives for coming to the United States, but probably foremost among them was a desire to experience what seems to have been the finest of all sports…

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About

Scott AlumbaughIn early March 2020, I decided to bikepack the length of the Pony Express Trail in Summer 2021, following the Pony Express Bikepacking Route, a nearly all off-road route created by Jan Bennett. You can learn more here >

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