Series: Death Came A-Knockin’: Freak Accidents on the Westering Trails

Everyone who’s ever played the Oregon Trail game know that emigrants stood a good chance of dying from disease or drowning at a river crossing before ever reaching the Willamette Valley. Of course, there were other common ways to die on the way to Oregon, Utah, or California. These were the possibilities people knew and worried about as they loaded up their wagons and started their oxen westward. But there were other ways to end one’s trip early. Unexpected ways. Freak accidents.

  • Article 1: Can I Eat This: Freak Accidents on the Westering Trails

    Clusters of small white flowers.

    In 1849, many companies of gold seekers decided to follow the Applegate Trail to a new cutoff, said to be a quicker way to the goldfields. Lassen’s Cutoff turned out to be 200 miles longer than the established routes, extending the trip by weeks. Long before reaching the mines, most companies ran out of food. Starving men desperately filled their empty bellies with anything they could chew- rotting livestock lying trailside, boiled bits of leather, and plants, some poisonous. Read more

  • Article 2: Trust Me, I’m a Doctor: Freak Accidents on the Westering Trails

    A wooden wagon wheel with spokes radiating out from the center.

    Edwin Bryant, traveling overland to California in 1846, had only briefly studied medicine, and he never claimed to be a physician. But somewhere along Nebraska’s Platte River, a little boy from another party had gotten his leg crushed under wagon wheels. The child, eight or nine years old, survived but desperately needed medical attention. There being no doctor nearby, Bryant reluctantly agreed to examine him. Read more

  • Article 3: Thunder Road: Freak Accidents on the Westering Trails

    Lightning bolt in a dark sky.

    First comes a sudden stillness, then an unexpected cool breeze. Sunshine dims to darkness as growling, green-black clouds pile overhead, flickering with lightning. The wind rises. A brilliant bolt splits the air with a deafening crr-ACK, followed by momentary silence and then a violent, crashing boom that makes the living earth tremble... Read more

  • Article 4: Child’s Play: Freak Accidents on the Westering Trails

    A small green glass bottle with a cork topper.

    Laudanum is a tincture made from powdered opium, morphine, and codeine. Today it is available in the US only by prescription, but in the 19th century it was an inexpensive patent medicine used to quiet agitated minds, ease fever and pain, and relieve diarrhea. An overdose causes the victim to stop breathing, lapse into coma, and die. That’s what happened to six-year-old Salida Jane Henderson, called “Lettie,” while she camped with her family in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. Read more

  • Article 5: Mother’s Mortal Mistake: Freak Accidents on the Westering Trails

    A risen bread loaf in a tin pan.

    Joel Hills Johnson started along the trail in April 1857, on his way to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. On Big Mountain, less than 20 miles from the city, his group overtook a party of “apostates” – former Mormon converts who had abandoned their church and were leaving the Mormon realm. As was common practice, a mother of that party had stirred together a pan of bread dough in the morning and set it to rise in the wagon during the day... Read more

  • Article 6: Fatal missteps, Part 1: Freak Accidents on the Westering Trails

    A river squeezes through a narrow passage between two sheer rock walls

    Devil’s Gate, near Independence Rock in south-central Wyoming, is a deep, V-shaped cleft cut through a granite ridge by the Sweetwater River. Curious emigrants, including the younger brother of pioneer Ezra Meeker, made side-trips to explore the scenic feature. Read more

  • Article 7: Fatal missteps, Part 2: Freak Accidents on the Westering Trails

    Steam rises from a small pond that sits in a desert setting void of much vegetation

    Emigrants on the Truckee Route to California typically started across Nevada’s Fortymile Desert in the evening in order to avoid the heat of the midday sun. The one reliable place to find water along the desert trek was a place called Boiling Springs, where travelers could dip out and cool the precious water for their livestock to drink. Read more

  • California National Historic Trail

    Article 8: Death-Winds in the Sierra Nevada

    An illustration of a canvas tent in a forest with downed trees.

    Hurricane-force winds struck parts of the western US in September 2020, knocking down huge trees and tearing shingles from roofs. Emigrants traveling west in covered wagons encountered severe windstorms, too--some with deadly outcomes. Read more

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