The Oregon Trail

October 25, 2004
This is another lively work from one of our best chroniclers of the Old West. Dary (Cowboy Culture
; The Santa Fe Trail
; etc.) looks at the men and women who trekked the trouble-strewn paths to the nation's northwest coast. It's an epic American story of limitless hopes, searing losses, pioneers, missionaries and not a few bad characters. Dary opens with 18th-century maritime explorers and carries us into the late 19th century, when the trail west from Independence, Mo., had ceded its importance to the railroads. In the shadow of such great earlier historians as Francis Parkman and Bernard De Voto, Dary is matter-of-fact and exhaustive. Unfortunately, the facts are sometimes overwhelming, and a reader yearns for some analysis. But Dary makes up for this lack by salting his account with quotations from travelers' diaries and illustrations. He follows the rutted way of keeping the Indian tribes subsidiary to the story. Yet his closing chapter on the Oregon Trail's rebirth as a tourist draw in the 20th century is a real contribution to modern western lore. It's hard to imagine a more informative introduction to the westering itch along the Oregon Trail and to those who responded to it. 86 b&w illus., 7 maps. Agent, Spectrum Literary.
Alternate selection of the History Book Club and the Crossings Book Club.

November 1, 2004
The Oregon Trail was the major overland migration route between the Mississippi River and the western North American coast until the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869. Pioneer families with covered wagons traveling west in search of their dreams became an iconic image of frontier American culture. Western historian Dary, now retired from teaching journalism at the University of Oklahoma, provides a balanced and exciting account of the trail's history from its origins in the fur trade era to the mass pioneer emigrations of the 1840s-60s. Splendid uses of personal overland migration stories illustrate this historic and geographic overview, with appendixes of place names and modern roads making for a reader-friendly experience. Dary's inclusive history complements Laton McCartney's Across the Great Divide, which focuses on the trail's origins in 1812-13, and the reprint of Overton Johnson and William H. Winter's 1846 account, Route Across the Rocky Mountains. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.-Nathan E. Bender, Buffalo Bill Historical Ctr., Cody, WY

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 15, 2004
The fabled Oregon Trail was traversed by a quarter of a million people whose experiences, as often is the way with history, then faded into oblivion. In 1906, an old pioneer who had taken the trail in 1852 determined to commemorate it with an oxen-drawn reenactment of his journey. Alas, Twist the ox expired trailside, but Ezra Meeker's campaign succeeded in restoring the Oregon Trail to American historical consciousness. Meeker's tale typifies Dary's steady storytelling style in this superb chronicle of the trail: he eschews embellishment and hews to fact, permitting readers an unadorned but palpably realistic rendition of what traveling the trail was like. For many, as Dary aptly observes, the migration was "a monumental event in their lives," one documented by the anecdotes Dary selects from the 2,000 extant journals and recollections. Tracing the routes and topography of the trail, Dary integrates the attraction Oregon and the West held for mountain men, missionaries, Mormons, and forty-niners into a comprehensive history. Complemented by the author's " The Santa Fe Trail" (2000), it is bound to become a staple in collections about the Old West.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)