Craters of the Moon Historic Context Statements

Overland Travel in the Craters of the Moon Region, 1852-1904:
SUMMARY

Overland migration to Oregon and California constituted one of the most important events in the settlement of the American West. It was the longest journey of its kind undertaken by American settlers, and the Oregon Trail served as its primary route across southern Idaho, which also was considered one of the most inhospitable sections of the trail. Between 1840 and 1860, overlanders passing through the region for Oregon and California reached an apogee of a quarter of a million people. Slowing for a short time, the flow of migrants surged during the Civil War years, when some 125,000 emigrants crossed the trail by 1866, forming the longest unbroken migration wave over the Oregon-California Trail. After the Civil War ended and the transcontinental railroad crossed the continent, overland trail travel declined.

Although the majority of emigrants traveled the main trail along the Snake River during the antebellum migration, some overlanders opted for alternate routes, a main route being Goodale's Cutoff, which traversed the lava fields on the northern edge of today's Craters of the Moon National Monument. Some emigrants experimented with this route between 1852 and 1854, but travel along it afterwards was light and except for some military use, it was hardly used until emigrants of the Civil War era moved westward. They looked for shorter and faster routes to reach the newly discovered gold fields in western Montana and southern Idaho, as well as routes that would avoid Indian conflicts erupting with greater frequency along the main overland route. Drawn to the Boise Basin gold rush in 1862, a wagon party, led by Tim Goodale, crossed the route and passed through Craters with some eleven hundred emigrants, making it the largest company to have ever crossed any portion of the overland trail.

Overland travel likely continued throughout the 1860s but tapered off afterwards as a result of railroad construction. Still during the 1860s and 1870s, soldiers used the route to control Indian groups, and in 1878 Alexander Toponce established a stage line along Goodale's route, which accessed the mining boom towns of the upper Snake River country in the 1880s. During this time as well, ranchers herded livestock across the trail to reach eastern markets. Improvements to the route made it more attractive for travelers, yet the country it crossed won few admirers. After railroad service arrived in Arco in 1901, travel on the trail was restricted to the remote sections of the country near Craters of the Moon. Whether traveling in the early 1850s or early 1900s, when the last known settlers crossed the trail near the monument, attitudes about the Craters landscape remain fairly consistent. The arid, lava country elicited mostly negative responses from observers and enticed few, if any, to settle near it. In the minds of emigrants as well as in actual experience, the Craters of the Moon country appeared alien, impeded travel, and posed a threat to human life. Yet by all accounts, overland travel was the first known contact Anglo Americans had with today's monument, however brief or difficult.