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.
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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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