Don Wildman

When we come back, we'll discuss the legacies of the trail, the mythology surrounding it, and how it's been remembered in popular culture.

Okay, we're back with Professor Stephen Aaron.

We're finally nearing our destination.

Stephen, I'm curious, how did they know that they'd reached the end of the trail, other than these milestones that I've mentioned here?

And when they got there, was there an office?

How did they set themselves up?

Or had all that been already done for them back at the beginning?

How did the Oregon Trail affect the shaping of the American West and the nation at large?

I mean, as far as it... It's a very specific thing we're talking about.

It's one route into a massive territory.

How much was that responsible for the story of the West down the road?

Of course, this journey becomes curtailed eventually by the arrival of the railroad, right?

I mean, that's basically the major factor in why people no longer get into wagons and go west.

What other factors mitigated this form of settlement?

I want to circle back to the impact this had on Native Americans.

This is one of the big takeaways for me in this episode is that for a long time, it wasn't having as much effect as I would have assumed for those 1830s, 1840s.

Coming up into the settlement of the interior of the country, the Western interior, the establishment of states and territories, that's when really the impact is felt, isn't it?

Exactly.

That's where you get the displacement, the relocation to reservations, hunting grounds disrupted.

And these wagon trails really impact the migration of buffalo.