Man Follows History and Oregon Trail Through Idaho
I want this fellow’s job. I came across some videos on my YouTube feed and was transfixed. A man hopped into a Jeep and decided to see how much of the original Oregon Trail he could shadow. The trip took him a couple of weeks and he got an especially good look at eastern and southern Idaho. Two of the videos in the series, which looks to have been produced last summer, took him through eastern and southern Idaho.
What I especially liked was the reverence he had for many of the small and forgotten towns he passed through on his trip. He also checked out neighboring natural wonders and additional history. This includes stops at the old Stricker Home site and some old ghost towns and museums in Owyhee County. I just learned this week that old man Stricker was a veteran of the Civil War! The military became a family tradition.
The old Oregon Trail wasn’t one long stretch. It frequently split into separate routes and then later reconnected downriver or around some other geographic feature. The wagon ruts are still visible in many places, including here in Idaho.
It was, as I mentioned in a previous post, a long and arduous trek. Many never made it to Oregon and their graves are lost to history. Old wooden crosses long ago vanished.
The host of the video made the trip in a little over two weeks. That included multiple stops for sightseeing. He lists the population, founding date, and the history of the name at every town he rolled through. He also took some chances. He drove down some narrow paths and across one reservation.