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Terrible Trail: The Meek Cutoff, 1845
In the winter of 1960, when Keith Clark and Lowell Tiller hit upon the idea of investigating the tragic history of the Meek Cutoff in Oregon, they formulated four goals for
To write an investigative if not definitive work on the subject.
To lay to rest the mass of misinformation about the route of those lost and wandering pioneers who made up the Meek Train.
To narrate the passage of the emigrant train whose tragic experience rivaled - indeed, surpassed, in the number of deaths -that of the Donner Party of California. To help lay the groundwork for the solution of the Blue Bucket mystery.
This book offers the results of the achievement of these goals.
In 1845, when emigrant parties reached old Fort Boise on the Snake River, they still faced many tortuous miles through the Blue Mountains and down the Columbia to The Dalles. A shortcut which would avoid this fearsome part of the journey seemed to have been discovered by Stephen H. L. Meek, older brother of Joe Meek.
Confident that he could lead wagons through territory where he had trapped, and west across the Cascades through country he knew only by description, Meek, an intrepid mountain man, persuaded two hundred families to follow him through the trackless desert country of central Oregon. The emigrants made their way up the Malheur River, building their road as they went; and the story of their suffering, despair, and eventual rescue is presented in the pages of this book. Somewhere along the route to the Willamette Valley a group of these wandering people stumbled onto gold only to lose sight of it again. Subsequent searchers have traced and retraced the trail for more than a hundred years but to no avail. The book throws new light on the possibility of a rediscovery of the long-lost Blue Bucket gold.
There are thirty-three illustrations from photographs, three maps and an endsheet map, a bibliography, an index, and a roster of names of pioneers.
To write an investigative if not definitive work on the subject.
To lay to rest the mass of misinformation about the route of those lost and wandering pioneers who made up the Meek Train.
To narrate the passage of the emigrant train whose tragic experience rivaled - indeed, surpassed, in the number of deaths -that of the Donner Party of California. To help lay the groundwork for the solution of the Blue Bucket mystery.
This book offers the results of the achievement of these goals.
In 1845, when emigrant parties reached old Fort Boise on the Snake River, they still faced many tortuous miles through the Blue Mountains and down the Columbia to The Dalles. A shortcut which would avoid this fearsome part of the journey seemed to have been discovered by Stephen H. L. Meek, older brother of Joe Meek.
Confident that he could lead wagons through territory where he had trapped, and west across the Cascades through country he knew only by description, Meek, an intrepid mountain man, persuaded two hundred families to follow him through the trackless desert country of central Oregon. The emigrants made their way up the Malheur River, building their road as they went; and the story of their suffering, despair, and eventual rescue is presented in the pages of this book. Somewhere along the route to the Willamette Valley a group of these wandering people stumbled onto gold only to lose sight of it again. Subsequent searchers have traced and retraced the trail for more than a hundred years but to no avail. The book throws new light on the possibility of a rediscovery of the long-lost Blue Bucket gold.
There are thirty-three illustrations from photographs, three maps and an endsheet map, a bibliography, an index, and a roster of names of pioneers.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
250 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1966
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December 30, 2019
Another source for the 1845 Meek Cutoff, great resource to compare with the other more recent books.
October 11, 2010
wagon trains West
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews