The first major wagon train to the Pacific Northwest departed
from Elm Grove, Missouri, on the Oregon Trail.

The trail was heavily traveled until 1884, when the Union
Pacific constructed a railway along the route.

The first major wagon train to the northwest departs from Elm
Grove, Missouri, on the Oregon Trail.

Although U.S. sovereignty over the Oregon Territory was not
clearly established until 1846, American fur trappers and
missionary groups had been living in the region for decades,
to say nothing of the Native Americans who had settled the
land centuries earlier.

They followed a route blazed by fur traders, which took them west
along the Platte River through the Rocky Mountains via the easy
South Pass in Wyoming and then northwest to the Columbia River.

On this day in 1843, the first major wagon train to the northwest
departed from Elm Grove, Missouri, on the Oregon Trail. 

Some 1,000 men, women, and children climbed aboard their
wagons and steered their horses west.