The Applegate Trail

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The Applegate Trail By Stephen Most In 1843 three brothers, Jesse, Lindsay, and Charles Applegate and their families, joined the emigrants who traveled the Oregon Trail. Times had been hard back home in Missouri. Prices of pork and other stock had fallen so low, there was no point taking them to market. Yet that suffering did not prepare the Applegates for the hardships of their journey, especially the calamity on the Columbia River, whose currents swept three of their children away and killed two of them. In 1846 Jesse and Lindsay Applegate, together with Leon Scott, headed a party to locate a less dangerous route to the Willamette Valley. Rather than bring families, oxen, and wagons over the Blue Mountains and along the daunting Columbia, the new route would lead emigrants through the southern mountains of the Cascade Range. The road that Scott and the Applegates built went through Nevada desert, passed Goose Lake, Tule Lake, and Lower Klamath Lake at the California-Oregon border, crossed the Cascades into the Rogue River Valley, then headed north toward the pioneers’ destination. The new road proved to be no easy detour. The first winter that the Applegate Trail was open for emigration came early and caused great suffering. This was the fatal winter of 1846-1847 when the Donner Party came to grief crossing California’s Sierra Nevada. It was also unfortunate that the Applegate Trail passed through the homeland of the Modocs. One band of Modocs ambushed emigrants at a place on the edge of Tule Lake that became known as Bloody Point. Although the Applegates built their trail to bring settlers north into Oregon, as soon as word of gold in California reached the newly established settlements, that road became jammed with men rushing south. Lindsay Applegate reached California in 1848, ahead of the rush, and returned home with $6,000 worth of gold dust. © Stephen Most, 2003. Updated by OHP staff, 2014. Oregon History Project https://www.oregonhistoryproject.org/articles/the-applegate-trail/.

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Oregon Historic Trails Report Book (1998)
i ,' o () (\ ô OnBcox HrsroRrc Tnans Rpponr ô o o o. o o o o (--) -,J arJ-- ö o {" , ã. |¡ t I o t o I I r- L L L L L (- Presented by the Oregon Trails Coordinating Council L , May,I998 U (- Compiled by Karen Bassett, Jim Renner, and Joyce White. Copyright @ 1998 Oregon Trails Coordinating Council Salem, Oregon All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. Oregon Historic Trails Report Table of Contents Executive summary 1 Project history 3 Introduction to Oregon's Historic Trails 7 Oregon's National Historic Trails 11 Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail I3 Oregon National Historic Trail. 27 Applegate National Historic Trail .41 Nez Perce National Historic Trail .63 Oregon's Historic Trails 75 Klamath Trail, 19th Century 17 Jedediah Smith Route, 1828 81 Nathaniel Wyeth Route, t83211834 99 Benjamin Bonneville Route, 1 833/1 834 .. 115 Ewing Young Route, 1834/1837 .. t29 V/hitman Mission Route, 184l-1847 . .. t4t Upper Columbia River Route, 1841-1851 .. 167 John Fremont Route, 1843 .. 183 Meek Cutoff, 1845 .. 199 Cutoff to the Barlow Road, 1848-1884 217 Free Emigrant Road, 1853 225 Santiam Wagon Road, 1865-1939 233 General recommendations . 241 Product development guidelines 243 Acknowledgements 241 Lewis & Clark OREGON National Historic Trail, 1804-1806 I I t . .....¡.. ,r la RivaÌ ï L (t ¡ ...--."f Pðiräldton r,i " 'f Route description I (_-- tt |".
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