Quilting on the Oregon Trail
Quilts brought warmth, comfort, memories of loved ones, and hope on the journey West full of fear and hardship. As surely as pens were...
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Notes From The Frontier
Notes from the Frontier author's new novel coming soon!
For sound, please click the note icon in the bottom right of the video.
Special thanks to Oscar-Winning Dances with Wolves co-composer Peter Buffett for use of his spectacular music from 500 Nations.
Take a wild ride into America’s past.
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- 3 min
Death on the Trail
About 10% of westering pioneers died on the Oregon Trail going west. That is 20 graves per mile, mostly unmarked. The Oregon Trail has...
- 1 min
Sod Houses – Humble Homes of the Prairie
Once westering pioneers reached their destination, they had to build homes. Those homes reflected the available natural resources of the...
- 7 min
A Pioneer Diary
These journal entries by Welsh immigrant James Bryant give us glimpses of pioneer day-to-day life on the trail west in 1862. My name is...
- 1 min
Tools Pioneers Needed to Survive
Here is a little primer of some basic tools pioneers packed in their covered wagons going West. This isn't a complete list, by any means....
- 7 min
Pioneer Christmas Diaries
American pioneers of lore would no doubt be shocked at what Christmas has become in our modern consumer world today. Their Christmas...
- 7 min
The First Wagon Trains West
When the Lewis and Clark Expedition first explored the far western reaches of the North American continent from 1804-1806, their arrival...
- 7 min
Pioneer Survival Guides in the 1800s
The mortality rate of westering pioneers was very high. Perhaps the greatest cause of death was pioneers not knowing the basics of survival.
- 7 min
Rabies on the Frontier
Rabies reached epidemic stages in some cities and territories in the 1800s and early 1900s and Americans were hysterical with fear.
- 9 min
How Log Cabins Were Built
The log cabin is an American icon. The rough-hewn, squat and humble house has long been lionized in our lore.
- 8 min
What Pioneers Ate
Pioneer survival depended on harsh realities and there was little room for sentimentality in food production.
- 6 min
Parting of the Ways
By far the most traveled frontier route West was a common trail shared by Oregon-bound and California-bound settlers.
- 7 min
Frontier Quilts
In frontier America, quilts were a way for women to gain immortality.
- 3 min
Kate Shelley
In 1881, a 17-year-old Irish immigrant girl named Kate Shelley risked her own life to save the lives of 200 souls on a midnight train.
- 3 min
Death on the Trail
The Oregon Trail has been called a 2,000-mile-long graveyard.
- 3 min
Pioneer Cemeteries
Today, all of us know of pioneer graveyards. They are lonely plots overgrown on random roadsides, with crumbling gravestones.
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