Don Wildman

to migration to settlement and and people in scandinavia and never mind ireland of course germans all had to be hearing about this as a kind of crazy phenomenon yeah and that continues through the 19th century again that just this opportunity the availability of land doesn't have any parallel in europe where most people were not going to achieve land ownership as a status

When we come back after this break, we're going to get up close and personal and talk about what life was like out on the Oregon Trail.

Hello, we're back discussing the Oregon Trail with Professor Stephen Aaron from the Autry Museum in Los Angeles.

Stephen, when we speak of the Oregon Trail, was it a singular thing or more of a general route?

What was the trail physically and geographically?

Depending on which trail you were on, I guess, generally speaking, they were all about 2,000 miles long, right?

And you would leave generally from the state of Missouri and then head northwest.

As you say, there are various routes that you could take on that thing, but it would take about four to six months.

Is that fair to say?

And I suppose the further they went, the more confirmed they were in that feeling.

I mean, it's hard life, those four or five months that you're in the middle there.

The sweet spot, I guess, was March, April, and May.

That's when you would leave so that you were getting there, as you say, not too late, not too early.

These trains did not leave alone, right?

You hired those handsome guides we saw in the movies.

John Wayne.

Moral background.

Yeah, they were courageous.

But seriously, though, there must have been companies that serviced this opportunity, right?

But the organization is what I'm always curious about, you know, because this is a vast operation.