63 Fun Facts About Oregon Trail

Student teachers from which Minnesota school wrote the original Oregon Trail?

Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann and Paul Dillenberger were Carleton College seniors doing student teaching in Minneapolis; they coded the game in about two weeks for Rawitsch's history class.

In what year did the very first version of The Oregon Trail debut in a Minneapolis junior-high classroom?

The Oregon Trail was first played on 3 December 1971 on the Minneapolis school district's HP 2100 minicomputer, reached through a teleprinter with no graphics at all.

In the original teleprinter version, what word did players have to type to fire their gun while hunting?

Later versions randomised the word between BANG and POW, and typing it faster earned more food; a misspelling meant the shot did nothing.

Which Minnesota organisation produced and distributed The Oregon Trail from 1975?

MECC, the state-funded Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium, put the game on its timesharing network in 1975, giving it to Minnesota schools free and selling it elsewhere.

In the 1985 game, the wagon party sets out from which town on the Missouri River?

The 1985 game starts every party at Independence, Missouri, the classic jumping-off point, in the spring of 1848.

Where does the journey end in the 1985 game?

The goal is the Willamette Valley, the fertile farmland west of the Cascades that drew most Oregon emigrants; reaching it after the final river ends the game.

Which of these is one of the three professions a player can choose at the start of the 1985 game?

Banker, carpenter and farmer doubled as difficulty levels, each starting with a different amount of cash.

Where does the 1985 game have you buy food, clothing and ammunition before leaving?

Matt's General Store at the start of the 1985 game sells the supplies; the same goods cost more at the forts along the trail, so stocking up before leaving pays off.

Which of these is one of the ways to cross a river in the 1985 game?

Players could ford the river, caulk the wagon and float it across, or at some crossings pay for a ferry; the odds depended on the river's depth and the weather.

On the last leg of The Oregon Trail (1985), players can pay a toll or raft down which river?

At The Dalles the player chooses between rafting down the Columbia River, dodging rocks in a simple action minigame, or paying to take the Barlow Toll Road around it.

What is the maximum food weight you can carry back to the wagon in Oregon Trail's 1985 hunting minigame?

However much you shoot, the 1985 game lets you carry only 100 pounds of meat back to the wagon, a nod to how much a real hunter could haul before it spoiled.

Who was the lead designer of the 1985 graphical remake of The Oregon Trail?

R. Philip Bouchard led the 1985 graphical redesign, adding the real-time hunting and river-crossing scenes and insisting the fun come from an immersive, accurate journey rather than lectures.

Which grim message from the game became a popular T-shirt slogan?

'You have died of dysentery' became the game's most quoted line and a T-shirt staple; the 1985 version introduced several distinct illnesses, dysentery among them, in place of generic sickness.

In which year was The Oregon Trail inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame?

The Strong museum inducted The Oregon Trail into its World Video Game Hall of Fame in 2016, alongside Space Invaders, Sonic the Hedgehog and The Sims.

Across all its versions, roughly how many copies of The Oregon Trail had been sold by 2011?

By 2011 the series had sold about 65 million copies across its versions, helped by years of bundling with school computers so children played it without anyone buying it.

Which company bought The Oregon Trail's original publisher and released the next games in the series?

SoftKey International bought the publisher a year after it went public and folded it into what became The Learning Company; the Minnesota studio was closed in 1999.

Which educational game joined The Oregon Trail in The Strong museum's hall of fame in 2021?

Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, Brøderbund's 1985 geography game, entered the hall of fame in 2021 alongside Animal Crossing, Microsoft Flight Simulator and StarCraft.

Which of these was a real MECC spin-off game in the same series?

The Amazon Trail, released in 1993, sent players up the river by canoe; The Yukon Trail, Africa Trail and MayaQuest: The Mystery Trail rounded out the family.

What is the name of the 2012 parody game that swapped the pioneers for survivors of a zombie apocalypse?

Organ Trail, from the studio The Men Who Wear Many Hats, began as a 2010 browser game and reached iOS and Android as Organ Trail: Director's Cut in 2012.

The 2021 remake of The Oregon Trail, developed by Gameloft, launched first on which subscription service?

Gameloft's remake debuted on Apple Arcade in April 2021 before coming to PC, Switch and other platforms; the studio consulted Native American historians to rework how tribes are portrayed.

In the 1985 hunting minigame, how did the game show that an animal had been shot?

Hit an animal and it flipped upside down; Bouchard's team used that as a placeholder until proper death graphics were ready, but playtesting children loved it, so it stayed.

StarKid Productions turned the game into a parody stage musical in 2014. What was it called?

It premiered in Chicago and was later posted in full on YouTube, like StarKid's earlier hit A Very Potter Musical.

The famous 1985 graphical version of The Oregon Trail was first released for which computer?

The 1985 version was written for the Apple II, the computer most American schools owned; MS-DOS, Mac and Windows ports followed between 1990 and 1993.

In which programming language was the original version written?

The original was about 800 lines of BASIC on the Minneapolis schools' timesharing system; Rawitsch printed it out before it was deleted and retyped it in 1974.

Don Rawitsch published the game's full source code in the May–June 1978 issue of which magazine?

He included some of the historical data he had used to tune the odds of disasters along the trail.

In what year was Oregon Trail II released?

Oregon Trail II came out in 1995 on CD-ROM, adding a choice of jumping-off towns, departure years from 1840 to 1860 and routes to California and Utah.

When MECC went public in 1994, The Oregon Trail made up roughly what share of annual revenue?

Nine years after release it was still the company's flagship product.

Roughly how long was the historic Oregon Trail from the Missouri River to Oregon?

The Oregon Trail ran about 2,170 miles from the Missouri River to western Oregon, its eastern half on the plains and its western half through the mountains and the Snake River country.

Which shallow, muddy river did the trail follow across the plains, 'too thin to plow and too thick to drink'?

The Platte, 'a mile wide and an inch deep' in another saying, was useless for boats, but its flat valley gave wagons a natural road west with grass, water and buffalo.

Which army post, established in 1848, was the first place on the Oregon Trail to buy supplies or mail a letter?

Fort Kearny, built by the army in 1848 where the feeder routes from Missouri and Iowa converged, offered emigrants their first store, blacksmith and post office on the trail.

Fort Laramie, the trail's major stop in Wyoming, stands where the Laramie River meets which other river?

Fort Laramie sits where the Laramie River joins the North Platte; it began as the fur post Fort William in 1834, became Fort John, and was bought by the army in 1849.

Which granite landmark on the Sweetwater River did Father De Smet nickname the 'Register of the Desert'?

Independence Rock, a granite dome where thousands of emigrants carved their names, earned the 'Register of the Desert' nickname from the Jesuit missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet in 1840.

By which date did wagon parties hope to reach the granite rock on the Sweetwater River to beat the snows?

Parties aimed to reach the rock by July 4; a later arrival risked early snow in the mountains of eastern Oregon before the journey's end.

Who led the first recorded crossing of South Pass in October 1812, returning east from Astoria?

Robert Stuart's party of Astorians, detouring south to avoid a Crow war party, crossed South Pass in October 1812 and so found the broad gap over the Continental Divide that every wagon would later use.

Chimney Rock, the spire that appears in so many trail diaries, stands in which present-day state?

Chimney Rock stands in western Nebraska, near Bayard, rising more than 300 feet above the river valley; it is the landmark most often mentioned in emigrant diaries.

The Barlow Road, opened in 1846 as the trail's final stretch, bypassed which mountain?

Sam Barlow's toll road, opened in 1846, skirted the south flank of Mount Hood, letting wagons reach the valley overland instead of being floated down the river from The Dalles.

How much did the Barlow Road toll gate charge per wagon?

Barlow charged $5 per wagon and 10 cents a head for livestock, which many emigrants judged cheaper and safer than rafting a family down the river.

In which year did the 'Great Migration' wagon train of an estimated 700 to 1,000 emigrants set out for Oregon?

The Great Migration of 1843 took roughly 875 to 1,000 people west; Marcus Whitman joined it and insisted the wagons could be driven all the way to Oregon.

In 1836, what did Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding become the first white women to do?

In 1836 Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding became the first white women to cross the Rocky Mountains, going over South Pass with their missionary husbands bound for the Oregon Country.

By 1842, which animal did most emigrants prefer for pulling their wagons?

Oxen were the favourite: docile, able to live on prairie grass and sage, and far cheaper than mules, though shoeing their cloven hooves meant throwing the animal down first.

What nickname was given to the light covered farm wagons that most families drove west?

The prairie schooner was a light farm wagon under a white canvas top that looked like a sail from afar; the heavier Conestoga freight wagon was too much to haul 2,000 miles.

Which disease was the biggest killer on the trail during the epidemic years of 1849 to 1855?

Cholera, spread through water fouled by crowded camps along the river, could kill within hours; some travellers were healthy at breakfast and dead by nightfall.

Use of the trail fell away sharply after what was completed in 1869?

The first transcontinental railroad, completed at Promontory Summit in May 1869, cut the trip to about a week for as little as $65, against four to five months by wagon.

About how many settlers, miners and ranchers used the Oregon Trail and its offshoots to head west?

About 400,000 settlers, farmers, miners and ranchers travelled the Oregon Trail and its branches before 1869, a small fraction of a nation that grew by 14 million people in 1840-1860.

Oregon- and California-bound wagon trains typically averaged about how many miles a day?

A wagon train made about 15 miles on a good day at a walking pace of around two miles an hour; Mormon companies with many children moved more slowly.

On the treeless prairie stretch of the route, what did emigrants gather to fuel their cooking fires?

Dried buffalo dung, the 'buffalo chips' of the diaries, burned fast and smoky, and gathering it was a daily chore for children once the wagons left the wooded river bottoms.

Which town, then the proposed territorial capital, was the trail's official end point?

Oregon City, at the falls of the river and seat of the provisional government, was the trail's official end; many families stopped short wherever the land looked promising.

Which US coin was struck on and off between 1926 and 1939 to commemorate the Oregon Trail?

Congress authorised a half dollar, the Oregon Trail Memorial coin, struck intermittently from 1926 to 1939; Ezra Meeker, who had gone west in 1852, lobbied for it in his nineties to fund trail markers.

The 1930 western The Big Trail gave which actor his first starring role?

John Wayne, then 23 and billed under that name for the first time, played scout Breck Coleman in The Big Trail; Stagecoach would make him a star nine years later.

Which 2021 Yellowstone prequel follows the Dutton family on the Oregon Trail from Texas to Montana?

1883 (2021) follows James and Margaret Dutton, played by Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, on a wagon train from Fort Worth that ends their journey in Montana's Paradise Valley.

Which folk singer wrote and recorded a song called 'Oregon Trail' while travelling the region in 1941?

Woody Guthrie wrote 'Oregon Trail' in May 1941 on a one-month contract with the Bonneville Power Administration, one of 26 songs he produced about the Northwest's dams and rivers.

Fort Hall, the Snake River trading post in Idaho, was sold in 1837 to which fur company?

Hudson's Bay Company bought Fort Hall from Nathaniel Wyeth in 1837, and its agents long urged emigrants to abandon their wagons there for pack animals.

In 1847, Brigham Young's pioneers left the main trail at which stop for the Salt Lake Valley?

At Fort Bridger the Mormon pioneers turned south-west, following the Donner Party's faint track of the year before through the Wasatch into the Salt Lake Valley.

Wyoming's Sublette–Greenwood Cutoff saved 70 miles but crossed roughly how many miles of waterless desert?

The cutoff's dry stretch ran about 45 miles from the Big Sandy to the Green River; it saved nearly a week, so hurrying gold-seekers took it despite having no water, grass or fuel.

The ill-fated Donner Party of 1846 left the main trail to try which shortcut?

The Donner Party took the Hastings Cutoff south of the Great Salt Lake, lost weeks in the Wasatch and the salt desert, and was snowbound in the Sierra Nevada by November 1846; nearly half its 87 members died.

Who starred in NBC's short-lived 1977 television series The Oregon Trail, cancelled after six episodes?

Rod Taylor played widower Evan Thorpe leading his family west in NBC's The Oregon Trail, which the network dropped in 1977 after only six episodes had aired.

Who took the first wagons through South Pass, in 1832?

Benjamin Bonneville, an army captain on leave to trade furs, took 20 wagons through South Pass in July 1832, proving the route passable for wheeled vehicles.

The 1839 Peoria Party marched west under a flag bearing which motto?

The Peoria Party's flag read 'Oregon Or The Grave'; its young men, calling themselves the Oregon Dragoons, quarrelled and split near Bent's Fort in Colorado, though several reached Oregon.

Whose wagons were the first to be driven overland to Fort Walla Walla, in September 1840?

Robert Newell and Joseph Meek drove a small train of wagons from Fort Hall to Fort Walla Walla in 1840, the first to reach the river and opening the trail's last leg to wheels.

Which 1841 group is credited as the first emigrants to use the Oregon Trail to head west?

The Bartleson-Bidwell Party of 1841 was the first organised emigrant train on the trail; about half turned off at Soda Springs for Oregon while the rest struck out for California.

Roughly what share of Oregon's male population left for California in 1848 to chase gold?

An estimated two-thirds of Oregon's adult men rushed south to the California diggings in 1848; many returned with gold that jump-started the territory's economy.

How many pounds of flour did guidebook author T. H. Jefferson recommend per adult?

Jefferson's 1849 guide called for 200 pounds of flour per adult, alongside about 150 pounds of bacon, 20 of sugar and 10 of coffee, for the four-to-six-month trip.

According to historian John Unruh, roughly what was the death rate on the overland trails?

John Unruh's study The Plains Across put overland deaths at about 4 percent of travellers, roughly 10,000 of the 250,000 who went west between 1840 and 1860.