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Traffic jams on the Oregon Trail
By
Amy Crane •
Bankrate.com
It's your worst nightmare: stuck in a traffic jam
on I-80 West while you're driving a U-Haul filled with all your
worldly possessions. The air conditioning is broken and you're worried
about a tire blowing out. The Oregon Trail traveler in the 1840s
would no doubt sympathize.
Such was the rush to get on the trail in early May
that the fields outside jumping-off towns such as Independence,
Mo. were thronged with travelers, wagons and animals. Roads out
of town and ferries were choked with traffic, much of it from accidents
caused by inexperienced travelers who had never driven a wagon or
hitched oxen.
Once the trail opened up, the weather and other
natural obstacles caused a lot of stop-and-go traffic. One emigrant
reported that his wagon train was halted for two hours by a herd
of stampeding buffalo.
According to the Web site the Oregon
Trail, some would-be inventors became so frustrated at the slowness
of the journey and the traffic jams that they proposed a variety
of vehicles to cut the trip's length. For example, Rufus Porter,
founder of Scientific American, dreamed up an idea to fly emigrants
to Oregon in an airship made of propeller-driven balloons, which
were to be powered by steam engines.
Then there was the wind wagon, in which a large sail
was placed on a wagon. A prototype briefly worked, then careened
out of control and crashed. In the end, neither of these ideas ever
went anywhere.
-- Posted: July 7, 2004
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