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Emigrant Trails: The Long Road to California by Marshall Fey
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Oregon-California Trails Association

13 hours ago

On this day in 1861, the 2 1/2-year history of the Butterfield Overland Mail in Texas came to an end. The Butterfield line began operations on September 15, 1858. It carried passengers and mail between St. Louis, Memphis, and San Francisco, a distance of 2,795 miles. A government contract called for the company to carry letter mail twice weekly in both directions in four-horse coaches, or spring wagons suitable for carrying passengers. Each trip was to be completed in twenty-five days. The postage rate was ten cents per half ounce. Passenger fare was $200 each way. Stage service in Texas was terminated in March 1861, when an agreement was made to modify the contract and move the route northward out of the state. ... See MoreSee Less

TSHA | Butterfield Overland Mail

www.tshaonline.org

The Butterfield (or Southern) Overland Mail, which operated from September 15, 1858, until March 1, 1861, was a semiweekly mail and passenger stage service from St. Louis, Missouri, and Memphis, Tenne...

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Oregon-California Trails Association

2 days ago

Today we close out Black History Month with our sixth video featuring the contributions of black Americans to our National Historic Trails. OCTA's newest video is of Sam Shepherd, a slave born in 1800 whose master trained him to be a master craftsman, who then hired Sam out as a wood-worker. In 1827, Sam hewed the logs for the first courthouse in Jackson County, Missouri. The log structure still stands today as a museum in Independence. The courthouse was the scene of many legal decisions related to Mormon pioneers and Santa Fe Trail traders, and later served as a trade goods store for those setting out to Oregon or California. Harry Truman had a temporary office here while the modern courthouse was being remodeled in the 1930s, and his wife Bess held her lady's club meetings there. Sam's family, who largely live in Texas in the 21st century, recently started holding their family reunions in the courthouse that Sam helped create. We hope you've enjoyed our series featuring the Black American experience on our National Historic Trails. Please subscribe to our channel to get alerts as soon as we launch our next series of videos, which will feature multiple vignettes on the Southern Route between Nogales and Yuma in Arizona, the Missouri outfitting towns of Lexington and St. Joseph, and the famed Lone Elm Campground in Kansas, among others. #BlackHistoryMonth #BlackHistoryMonth2021 #OCTA #OregonTrail #CaliforniaTrail #MormonPioneerTrail #SantaFeTrail #IndependenceSquare #VisitIndependence #IndepMo ... See MoreSee Less

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The Oregon-California Trails Association (a non-profit, 501 (C) (3) association) is the nation’s largest and most influential organization dedicated to the p...

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Oregon-California Trails Association

3 days ago

OCTA's board of directors is holding its bi-annual board meeting today via Zoom. We hope to meet in person next September at the Elko, Nevada Convention. ... See MoreSee Less

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Oregon-California Trails Association

3 days ago

Because it is Black History Month, OCTA has created a number of short videos highlighting African-Americans on our National Historic Trails. Our newest video is of Biddy Mason, a slave from Mississippi whose master converted to Mormonism and moved to Nauvoo, Illinois. Biddy went to Salt Lake City via the Mormon Pioneer Trail, then on to San Bernardino in 1851. After gaining her freedom, she went on to become one of the wealthiest residents of Los Angeles. We're debuting this video in our bi-annual board meeting this morning. Watch to learn more about Biddy!#BlackHistoryMonth #BlackHistoryMonth2021 #OCTA #OregonTrail #CaliforniaTrail #MormonPioneerTrail #MormonBattalion ... See MoreSee Less

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The Oregon-California Trails Association (a non-profit, 501 (C) (3) association) is the nation’s largest and most influential organization dedicated to the p...

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Oregon-California Trails Association

4 days ago

The Rice-Tremonti House in Raytown, Missouri was an important site along the Oregon-California-Santa Fe National Historic Trails. We're excited to see this important work get underway. https://www.facebook.com/groups/237309689982/permalink/10158313087379983/ ... See MoreSee Less

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Oregon-California Trails Association

4 days ago

Because it is Black History Month, OCTA has created a number of short videos highlighting the contributions of African-Americans to our National Historic Trails. Our newest video is of Harriet Ann Dawes, who was both a slave and the granddaughter of the famed trail freighter and Pony Express co-founder William Waddell.The rest of the interview not included in the video reads:"I can read and write well. They did not teach us to read and write in slavery days. I went to a school opened by the Yankees after the surrender."I went with my mother to Levenworth, Kansas. She sent me to school in Flat, Nebraska. I met my husband there. My first husband was Elisha Williams; I ran away from school in Flat, and married him. He brought me to Raleigh. He was born and raised in Wake County. We lived together about a year when he died July 1st, 1872. There was one child born to us which died in infancy."I married the second time Rufus H. Dawes in 1875. He was practically a white man. He wouldn’t even pass for a mulatto. He used to belong to the Haywoods. He died in 1931 in Raleigh."I think Abraham Lincoln was a fine, conscientious man; my mother worshipped him, but he turned us out without anything to eat or live on. I don’t think Mr. Roosevelt is either hot or cold–just a normal man."https://youtu.be/9-gIuZE3Y2s#BlackHistoryMonth #BlackHistoryMonth2021 #OCTA #OregonTrail #CaliforniaTrail #SantaFeTrail #PonyExpress #LexingtonMissouri ... See MoreSee Less

Harriet Ann Dawes

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The Oregon-California Trails Association (a non-profit, 501 (C) (3) association) is the nation’s largest and most influential organization dedicated to the p...

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Oregon-California Trails Association

4 days ago

The Oregon Geographic Names Board (OGNB) voted in favor of the proposed name change of Jackson County’s “Negro Ben Mountain” to Ben Johnson Mountain, honoring the life of the first known Black homesteader on the mountain. The new name has been forwarded on to the US Geological Survey with OGNB’s recommendation. If approved nationally, Ben Johnson Mountain will become the feature’s official name on all maps.Ben Johnson was a Black man born in Alabama in 1834 who came to Oregon in 1853, settling in a Jackson County community called Uniontown along the Applegate River. On a mountain near town, he built a blacksmith shop where he lived and worked between 1868 and 1869 at the height of the area’s mining boom. By 1870, Johnson had left Jackson County and settled in Albany, Oregon where he married Amanda Gardener, a former slave, and continued to work as a blacksmith. He died in 1901 at age 66. The 4500’ mountain where Johnson’s cabin stood sits south of the tiny town of Ruch in the Rogue River National Forest, near today’s Cantrell Buckley County Park. At some point while Johnson lived there or just after, the mountain became known as “N---er Ben Mountain”. The name stood as official until 1964 when the US Geological Survey’s Board on Geographic Names changed the mountain’s name to Negro Ben Mountain.Read more on the Oregon Black Pioneers' website at https://oregonblackpioneers.org/2020/10/… ... See MoreSee Less

SUCCESS - Oregon Geographic Names Board approves "Ben Johnson Mountain"! - Oregon Black Pioneers

oregonblackpioneers.org

On October 24, 2020 the Oregon Geographic Names Board (OGNB) voted in favor of the proposed name change of Jackson County’s “Negro Ben Mountain” to Ben Johnson Mountain, honoring the life of the...

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Oregon-California Trails Association

5 days ago

"The West is filled with stories of cowboys, loggers, pioneers, and homesteaders seeking new lives often under uncertain, tough circumstances. Now imagine if the stories and those individuals who forged new paths for themselves and their families on the frontier were Black. In 1857, the state of Oregon’s constitution set exclusion laws that did not allow Black Americans to settle, live, or own property, and over time, this led to an erasure of the state’s Black history. Today, two preservation organizations—both grantees of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund (AACHAF)—Oregon Black Pioneers and Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center, are combatting this legacy of whiteness by bringing these untold histories of Black Americans in the Pacific Northwest to light."Created in 1993, as the Oregon Northwest Black Pioneers, the Oregon Black Pioneers (OBP) changed to their current name in 2012 in order to focus specifically on Oregon’s Black American history. “[This change was] critical because these are the things that you can point to about your existence—solidly in place saying ‘Yes, I am.’ A place to show that Black people in Oregon were a critical part [of the state’s] development,” says Willie Richardson, president and co-founder. She says, “Today, Oregon has the reputation of being called the ‘whitest state in the country,’ [but Oregon’s Black history] often gets dismissed or not told, and we have such a rich [history]. This is not just an Oregon story, but a national one.”The current Executive Director of OBP, Zachary Stocks, describes how Oregon has many buildings and historic places related to African American history that are still standing and need protection, but because of the neglected histories, these places have often been lost. From homes representing African American settlement along the Oregon Trail to early Black businesses such as Dean’s Beauty and Barber in Portland, there is a wealth of Black historic sites across the state, though the largest concentration is in the city of Portland, including the Golden West Hotel and Mount Olivet Church.“African Americans aren’t really aware of preservation [as a field] and see it as a way of preserving white men’s history and gentrifying neighborhoods,” says Kimberley Moreland, vice president of OBP. “But Mount Olivet, for instance, is seen as a way of keeping it there as a reminder they once lived in the community.”Read more here:https://forum.savingplaces.org/blogs/lawana-holland-moore/… ... See MoreSee Less

From Trails to Timber: Uncovering Black History in Oregon

forum.savingplaces.org

Oregon Black Pioneers and Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center—both grantees of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund—work to bring untold histories of Black Americans in the Pacific...

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Oregon-California Trails Association

5 days ago

Because it is Black History Month, OCTA has created a number of short videos highlighting African-Americans on our National Historic Trails. Our newest video is of Trinity Palmer, a fictional character created and portrayed here by Nancy Eppert, the director of the Independence (MO) Community Theater. She created the slave-owning character of Trinity Palmer using various sources to cobble together an example of life along the trails in Jackson County in the mid-19th century. The character of Sadie is portrayed by 15-year-old Catarena Palma. #BlackHistoryMonth #BlackHistoryMonth2021 #OCTA #OregonTrail #CaliforniaTrail #SantaFeTrail #Independence #IndependenceSquare #IndepMo ... See MoreSee Less

Trinity & Sadie Palmer - Slavery in Independence, MO

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The Oregon-California Trails Association (a non-profit, 501 (C) (3) association) is the nation’s largest and most influential organization dedicated to the p...

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Oregon-California Trails Association

5 days ago

On this day in history February 25, 1849, the Whiting and Smith Expedition was exploring the route between El Paso and San Antonio;"The expedition left San Antonio on February 12, 1849, with Whiting in command of a force of fifteen men. The escort of nine men included experienced woodsmen and hunters well versed in frontier life. Whiting, only twenty-four years old, had no previous frontier or Indian experience. His guide was Richard A. Howard, who had been with Hays on the previous exploration. "Leaving Fredericksberg on February 21, they proceeded northwest across the Llano River and then southwest across the Pecos to the Rio Grande. On March 24, after a narrow escape from an encounter with Apaches west of the Pecos, they arrived at Fort Leaton, near Presidio del Norte. After resting at Fort Leaton they resumed their journey on March 29, traveling up the east bank of the Rio Grande to their destination, Ponce's Ranch, opposite El Paso del Norte. They left the ranch by a different route and went down the Rio Grande for 120 miles, then turned east to the Pecos, which they followed southeast for sixty miles. They crossed over to the Devils River, then to Las Moras Creek, the Nueces River, and the Rio Seco. They arrived in San Antonio, in two parties, on March 21 and 24. "Whiting reported that his return route could be made into a practical wagon road for military and commercial purposes between San Antonio and El Paso. The route pioneered by Whiting and Smith was extensively used in later years. A wagon road was constructed by engineers in the summer of 1849 and became known as the lower or southern road. It was used by the United States army, mail stages, Texas cattle drovers, and settlers migrating to New Mexico, Arizona, and California. It is also followed by part of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company's tracks from San Antonio to El Paso."Read the full account here:https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/whiting-and-smith-expedition ... See MoreSee Less

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Bruff's Wake: J. Goldsborough Bruff & the California Gold Rush, by H. L James $24.95
The Oregon Trail Revisited, by Gregory M. Franzwa $24.95
In Pursuit of a Dream (DVD) $20.00
Reading, Writing and Riding Along the Oregon-California Trails (An Educational Activity Book), by William E. Hill $8.95

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