People Died In Ghastly Ways Along The Oregon Trail

Today we drive across America in climate-controlled vehicles, doing 80 miles per hour or so.

Or we fly coast to coast in a matter of a few hours.

But, as you know, the first to make those roads, coast to coast, had no roads at all.

350,000 people pushed along the 2,170-mile-long Oregon Trail between 1841 and 1869.

The last documented crossing was in 1909.

20,000 to 30,000 died in some horrific ways.

Water is necessary.

But water can KILL!

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Rivers got high and moved too fast. Many people were swept away.

Wet soil made mud so deep it sucked down wagon wheels and made muck and quicksand that even animals could not get out of.

Tainted or contaminated water made many sick and caused painful deaths.

Blizzards trapped and killed many who tried to travel just a little out of season.

Summer heat baked many travelers to death.

Animals killed many

Their own animals might panic or rebel.

Then there were snakes and bugs that bit.

The smallest killer was disease.

Diseases may have claimed as many as 30,000 victims.

Cholera was a huge problem that could kill its victim within twelve hours of its first symptom.

Measles was particularly bad among children in wagon trains.

Then there was scurvy, smallpox, pneumonia, typhoid fever, colds, food poisoning dysentery, just to name a few.

The Doctor might kill

There were few doctors on the trail.

Most had never seen diseases like these.

Most doctors did not have much to work with.

In many cases, it was the cure that killed people.

They killed each other

Tensions were high.

People fought.

With no law around, they killed each other, sometimes over the dumbest things.

Malnutrition

They could not carry much food.

What they could carry was not always the best for them, though it was filling, it may not satisfy what the body was really needing.

Running out of food was always a big problem.

Bad Avice or Direction

Getting a bad map or bad direction would lead people astray.

Many got lost and died, wandering the West, or stuck in the mountains.

The Donner Party is a prime example.

The Largest Gun, Saddle & Oddity Museum In Wyoming

The old west is preserved with the largest collection of guns, saddles and rare western oddities at King's Saddlery & Museum in downtown Sheridan, Wyoming.

Old Medicine Of The Chugwater Wyoming Drugstore

If you visit the tiny town of Chugwater Wyoming you'll find the newly restored Soda Fountain.

In fact it's Wyoming's oldest soda fountain and malt shot.

It's always worth stopping in for breakfast or lunch, or maybe a shake or malt.

The place was a drug store and soda fountain for the longest time.

Back then soda was actually used to cure an upset stomach.

So what sort of old medicines were left behind by Chugwater's last pharmacist?

It turns out, some of them are on display.

Source: People Died In Ghastly Ways Along The Oregon Trail

Filed Under: danger, dead, death, Oregon Trail