The End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center is one of our favorite Portland destinations. This site is the actual end of the trail where travelers would spend the winter before heading north or south to claim their land. We recently ventured there with friends with our local library's free Cultural Pass. We adults and children learned so much about the Oregon Trail on our visit.
Knowledgeable guides walked us through many details of the planning and execution of families' travels west. Just as with each previous visit, our children loaded up their wagon for their travels, made butter, dipped candles, bound leather journals, watched a movie, got dressed up, played pioneer games, and filled out paperwork to claim land at the claims office.
From our day there, one pioneer story stands out in my mind about a mother of five children who was afraid of snakes. She unloaded everything in her covered wagon each night so she and her children could sleep off the ground. Her husband wouldn't help her with this because he hoped she would give up on the task. In her journal one night she wrote something like this. "Crossed two rivers, walked 18 miles, stopped to camp, prepared supper, about 9:00 noticed children were beginning to tire, unloaded the wagon, put children to bed, then little Sarah joined our family around 10:00." She had birthed her sixth child shortly after getting her others to sleep that night. What an amazing adventure! What a day!
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| Dipping candles |
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| Dressing up and churning butter |
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| Loading the family wagon |
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