JJMt said:
Dr. Brown also said that the popular movie image of a wagon train with 10 to 20 wagons in it was largely incorrect. He said that during the height of the Oregon Trail there would literally be an unbroken stream of wagons from Missouri all the way to Oregon.
I have read excerpts of some of the journals of the immigrants and they also describe it that way. Unsurprisingly, they were a very fractious bunch of people, would get mad at the folks they had started with, and would then join up with the folks either right before them or right after them And keep doing that the entire length of the journey.
I have an addiction to back-of-the-envelope calculations, so:
That would mean a minimum of 800,000 people on the trail at any given time. 2,000 miles, 50 feet per wagon, 4 people per wagon.
A quick Google search says that 350,000 people total traveled the Oregon Trail over a 30 year period. That's 12,000 per year. I'm sure there was a peak, but still well short of the 800,000 people needed for an unbroken line.
Another way to look at it is that it was a three month trip, but they had to watch out for seasons. Someone leaving St. Louis just as the first train arrived in Oregon would be taking some pretty serious risks trying to cross high desert and northern mountains in late fall.
My numbers are very rough estimates, but I would like to see more support for the quoted assertion. Maybe it would be more fair to say that the ~12,000 people each year all left St. Louis at about the same time, so even though they were technically in separate trains they were all within a couple weeks of each other, and therefore could frequently see other trains?
