Wagon West Views

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In the spring of 1843, the first ripple of a coming tide of would-be settlers piled everything they owned into canvas-covered wagons, handcarts and any other vehicle that could move, and set out along a dim trace called t'the Emigrant Road.a' They went by way of a route that was a broad ribbon of threads, sometimes intertwining, sometimes splitting off into frayed digressions. It ran beside waterways, stretched across tall-grass and short-grass prairies, wound through mountain passes, and then spanned the Pacific Slope to the promised lands of Oregon and California. One in 17 never made it. This road to the Far West soon became known by another name

Even today, ruts from the wagon wheels remain etched indelibly in the fragile topsoil of the Western landscape. The Oregon Trail opened at a time when the westward settlement and development of the trans-Mississippi West had stalled at the Missouri River; Mexico still claimed all of California, and Alaska remained Russian territory. Everything from California to Alaska and between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean was a British-held territory called Oregon. The trail pointed the way for the United States to expand westward to achieve what politicians of the day called its 'Manifest Destinys' to reach r'from sea to shining sea.o'

It was said that snow did not exist in Californiac's golden valleys, that the black soil of Oregon was bottomless, that vast rivers afforded easy transportation, and that no forests barred the way to migrating wagons. Ignorance allowed travelers to advance where fuller knowledge might have rooted them with apprehension. But they were farm folk and had pioneered before. They were adept with wagons, livestock, rifles and axes. The women were used to walking beside the men as wilderness equals. Above all, they were restlessi–once a farm had been tamed, the narrow horizons of the backwoods communities closed around them. Vast and unclaimed riches far to the west, across the Great Plains, beckoned. It was as if the land itself were pulling the people westward.

Jeff Curtis (Rod Cameron), a wagon-master on his way to accept the job of leading a pioneer train from Joplin, Missouri to the Oregon territory, picks up Ben Wilkins (Michael Chapin), a young boy who has run away from the train because train captain Cyrus Cook (Frank Ferguson) wouldn=#x27;t allow him to take his dog on the trip. He meets BenT#x27;s sister, Ann (Peggy Castle), and this leads to a conflict with Cook #x27;s nephew, Clay (Henry Brandon), who has his own plans for Ann that does not include her kid brother and his dog. The trip west has a lot of problems, mostly Indian raids by a tribe who are buying rifles from two members of the wagon train. Which two? Rest assured it ain #x27;t the kid and his dog. Written by Les Adams n#x3C;longhorn1939@suddenlink.netl#x3E;