Popular Culture Review Vol. 14, No. 1, February 2003 | Page 97
Bicycling Across History to Oregon
93
Many of the earliest guide-books published to help emigrants make their way
across the continent pictured an easy trip, that almost a 6-months holiday could be
expected. Of course, travelers soon learned differently. Their diaries are full of the
words “anxious” and “anxiety” and of comments about their ever-present com
panion—death. For example, a 10-day period in the diary of Cecelia Adams, who
crossed from Illinois to Oregon in 1852, is full of notations like these: “Child’s
grave....child’s grave....We passed 7 new-made graves. A man died this morning
with cholera in the company in front of us... .Another man died... .Passed 13 graves
today. We passed 21 new-made graves...made 18 miles. Passed 13 graves today.
We passed 21 new-made graves...made 18 miles. Passed 13 graves today, passed
10 graves....Passed 7 graves...m ade 14 miles. Passed 8 graves....Passed 10
graves.”" It might not have been an easy trip for all, but for many it was apparently
a short one.
But the myth of easy-crossings persists. At Chimney Rock, in western Ne
braska, long a famous landmark on the Oregon Trail, we stopped to read the his
torical markers and to take a picture. Along came a car with Maryland license
plates. The man and woman had just spent three weeks touring the West by car.
Seeing our bicycles and learning that we were from their home state, the two com
menced an argument. The woman exclaimed that there was no way we could have
cycled 1800 miles to Chimney Rock. Her husband pushed back his new cowboy
hat and declared that anyone could bike that far — and easily. Just look at our
bikes. Did they not have 18 gears? Why all one had to do, he declared heatedly and
in all seriousness, was Just point the bicycle in the right direction and the gears
would do the rest. Let me tell you, I did try for the next 1700 miles to Just “point”
my bicycle toward the Pacific Ocean, especially when traversing the Rockies, Blues,
Cascades and Coastal ranges — and then again when I turned around and solo
hiked another 3500 miles back to the Atlantic seashore. But I found that pedaling
helped.
In early August, my sojourn ended. And as Loren Hastings, who arrived in
Oregon in 1847, declared: “I look upon the long and precarious emigrant road with
a degree of romance and pleasure.”'-1 felt the same way.
Frostburg State University
David M. Dean
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
Jesse Quinn Thornton, Oregon and California in IHdfi, (N.Y.: Harper Bros. 1849), 17.
Quoted in re view ordoeumeniary “The Indomitable Teddy Roosevelt,” Washington Post, August
31. 1983.
John Unruh, The Plains Across: Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-1869,
(Urbana; University of Illinois Pre.ss. 1979), 38.
Boyd Gibbon, “The Iteh to Move West,” National Geographic, August, 1986, 154.