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Full color OCTA registered logo patch, ready to sew on shirts, jackets or caps.

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Oregon-California Trails Association

18 hours ago

Well, the overland trail emigrants crossed the prairies and spoke of them in diaries and letters, so we might as well celebrate the grasslands!National Prairie Day, established by the Missouri Prairie Foundation in 2016, enhances public awareness of what a prairie is, educates about its value, and motivates and inspires all to support prairie conservation, restoration and enjoyment. ... See MoreSee Less

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Oregon-California Trails Association

19 hours ago

Learn about Independence and Sugar Creek history from OCTA board member Matt Mallinson, former mayor of Sugar Creek and also a current board member of the Independence School District. Matt also serves as co-chair of OCTA's educational programs committee. Here he discusses William Gilpin (October 4, 1813 – January 20, 1894), a 19th-century US explorer, politician, land speculator, and futurist writer about the American West. He served as military officer in the United States Army during several wars, accompanied John C. Frémont on his second expedition through the West, and was instrumental in the formation of the government of the Oregon Territory. As a politician and writer, he was an inveterate believer in Manifest Destiny and was a visionary booster of new settlement to the West, helping lay the groundwork in his writings for a modern theory of the succession of civilizations. He also attempted to set up Gilpintown at what is now Matt's winery on River Boulevard to intercept traffic coming from the Missouri River to Independence in hopes that his town would become a primary jumping off point on the Santa Fe, Oregon, and California Trails. ... See MoreSee Less

William Gilpin: Lawyer, Geopolitician, and Colorado Govenor

youtu.be

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

20 hours ago

Today in history 144 years ago, June 2, 1876, Charles Bowles (aka "Black Bart") robbed his third stagecoach, taking the Wells Fargo Box and mail five miles north of Cottonwood, California. Charles E. Bowles was one of the most notorious stagecoach robbers to operate in northern California and southern Oregon, eventually robbing Wells Fargo 28 times. Also known as Charles Bolton and T.Z Spalding, Black Bart was considered a gentleman bandit with a reputation for style and sophistication who even left poems at the scenes of his robberies.

Bowles was born in Norfolk, England to John and Maria Bowles in 1829. When he was just two years old, he and his family immigrated to Jefferson County, New York, where his father purchased a farm four miles north of Plessis Village. Charley received a common school education as a child and when he grew up, he moved to Decatur, Illinois. He and a cousin named David set out for the goldfields of California in 1849. After spending the winter in Missouri, they continued their trek to California, arriving in 1850. They started mining at the north fork of the American River near Sacramento.

After much hard work and no luck, the pair returned home in 1852. But, their stay in Illinois was brief, and they, along with Charley’s older brother Robert, soon returned to the California goldfields. Unfortunately, both David and Robert took ill soon after their arrival and died. Charles stayed on for two more years before returning east again. During the time he was gone, he changed the spelling of his last name from Bowles to Boles. In 1854, he married Mary Elizabeth Johnson and the couple would eventually have four children and settle on a farm in Illinois.

Several years later, when the Civil War erupted, Charles volunteered to join the Union Army in August 1862. He became a Sergeant the following year and was seriously wounded in the Battle of Vicksburg in May 1864. After his recovery, he returned to his unit and fought in the Battle of Atlanta. He received brevet commissions as both second lieutenant and first lieutenant, and on June 7, 1865, he was discharged with his regiment in Washington, D.C.

After the war, Charley returned home to Decatur, Illinois and started farming again, but it would not last for long. He soon made his way to Montana, once again hoping to make his fortune in mining. While there, he located a small mine that he worked with a friend from Missouri. Somewhere along the line, several men connected with Wells Fargo tried to buy them out as they wanted the land upon which the mine was located. However, Charles and his friend refused to sell and before long his potential buyers cut off their water supply, which forced them to abandon the mine. At this time he wrote several letters home telling of his anger and frustration, saying that he was going to take steps to correct his grievances. The last letter Mary Boles received from Charley was from Silver Bow, Montana, dated August 25, 1871. Though Charles had been in the habit of writing home often, the letters stopped. Months turned into years and when Mary heard a rumor that a party of travelers had been killed by Indians, she believed him to be dead.

In the meantime, a “new” Charles appeared on the scene — an elegantly dressed man in his mid-fifties that went by the name of Charles Bolton. He was described as being 5 feet 8 inches tall with clear blue/grey eyes and a brushy mustache. This dapper middle-aged man robbed his first stagecoach on July 26, 1875. Along the Copperopolis and Milton Road in Calaveras County, California a small man, wearing a long linen duster with a derby and flour sack with holes that had been cut for eyes over his head, jumped out from behind a large boulder and waved a shotgun at the driver.

Speaking in a deep and resonant tone, the thief politely ordered the stage driver, a man named John Shine (later a U.S. marshal and a California state senator), to throw down the strongbox. When it appeared that the stage driver was hesitating, the robber said: “If he dares to shoot, give him the solid volley, boys.” Looking around quickly Shine noticed several rifle barrels pointed at him from the nearby bushes and quickly threw down the strongbox.

In the meantime, a woman offered to surrender her purse, but the bandit declined, saying that he only wanted the Wells Fargo shipment. As the driver and the passengers looked on, the outlaw hacked open the box and removed several bags of gold coins and a few express packages before fleeing the scene. Afterward, John Shine went to recover the empty strongbox and upon examining the area, he discovered that the “men with rifles” were actually carefully rigged sticks. The man, soon to be known as “Black Bart,” had committed his first robbery, netting him $160.

Read more about Black Bart at this link. ... See MoreSee Less

Charles “Black Bart” Bowles – The Poet Outlaw – Legends of America

www.legendsofamerica.com

Black Bart was notorious stage robber operating in northern California and southern Oregon, who was a gentleman bandit with a reputation for style.

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Oregon-California Trails Association

2 days ago

Interesting information about canine forensics as of 2020 at the Donner Party's Starved Camp
https://mailchi.mp/6b63dfeeb19f/june-2020-icf-newsletter?e=3abe7e1d81 ... See MoreSee Less

June 2020 ICF Newsletter

mailchi.mp

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Oregon-California Trails Association

2 days ago

Today in history, June 1, 1868, the Treaty of Bosque Redondo is signed, allowing the Navajo to return to their ancestral homelands.

In 1863, the U.S. Army began removing more than 10,000 Navajo people from their extensive homelands in what is now the Four Corners region of the American Southwest to Bosque Redondo, Hwéeldi in the Navajo language, in eastern New Mexico. The 300-mile forced march of the Navajo from their homelands into internment has become known as the Long Walk.

The army continued to intern bands of Navajo resisters until 1866, when Major General James H. Carleton ordered that no more prisoners should be sent to the camp. The land at Bosque Redondo had proved unsuitable for farming, and the army could not provide for the Navajo people already held there.

In 1867 Congress established the Indian Peace Commission to find less costly means than war to bring American Indian resistance on the Plains to an end. In April 1868 a delegation of Navajo leaders traveled to Washington, D.C., to petition President Andrew Johnson to release of their people and return their homelands.
During treaty negotiations at Bosque Redondo in May, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, a member of the peace commission, proposed that the Navajo Nation should move to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) instead. The Navajo leader Barboncito replied:

“Bringing us here has made many of us die, also a great number of our animals. Our Grandfathers had no idea of living in any other place except our own land, and I don't think it is right for us to do what we were taught not to do. When the Navajo were first made, First Woman pointed out four mountains and four rivers that was to be our land. Our grandfathers told us to never move east of the Rio Grande River nor west of the San Juan River. . . . I hope to God you will not ask me to go anywhere except my own country.”

The Navajo prevailed.

On June 1, 1868, Navajo leaders signed their new treaty on pages cut from an army ledger book. The Navajo became the only nation to use a treaty to reverse their removal and return to a portion of their homelands.

Read more in Smithsonian Magazine in the link provided here. ... See MoreSee Less

The Treaty that Reversed a Removal—the Navajo Treaty of 1868—Goes on View

www.smithsonianmag.com

Written on paper from an army ledger book, the Navajo Nation Treaty reunited the Navajo with a portion of the land taken from them by the U.S. government. Between 1863 to 1866, in an event that became...

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Oregon-California Trails Association

3 days ago

When it is safe to travel again, consider visiting the National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center in Baker County, Oregon.Pioneer demonstrations hark back to a simpler time at the BLM Oregon Trail museum outside Baker City -- photo: Travel Baker County
Learn more about the museum and #OregonTrail history in the links below!
📍 Museum inf0: https://on.doi.gov/2Jbxpqo
🗺 Map of walking paths: http://ow.ly/mwdb50yAVRy
📲 Learn about the Oregon Trail: https://goo.gl/N8K7wf
🆕 Oregon Trail blacksmith shop: http://ow.ly/vqON50xtRFJ
💥 Firing a flintlock rifle: https://goo.gl/9Bxx63
🌐 #360video from wagon camp: https://goo.gl/ETRB5F
📸 Photo/video archive: https://goo.gl/3gCL4q ... See MoreSee Less

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Oregon-California Trails Association

3 days ago

On this day 250 years ago, May 31, 1770, Father Junípero Serra reached Monterey. Gaspar de Portolà, who organized this expedition by land and sea, led the first overland exploration of Alta California. Serra traveled aboard the supply ship San Antonio.

Junípero Serra y Ferrer (November 24, 1713 – August 28, 1784), was a Roman Catholic Spanish priest and friar of the Franciscan Order who founded a mission in Baja California and the first nine of 21 Spanish missions in California from San Diego to San Francisco, in what was then Alta California in the Province of Las Californias, New Spain.

Serra had a singular purpose to save, in his mind, Native American souls. He believed that the death of an unconverted heathen was tragic, while the death of a baptized convert was a cause for joy. He maintained a patriarchal attitude towards the Native American population. He wrote, "That spiritual fathers should punish their sons, the Indians, with blows appears to be as old as the conquest of the Americas; so general in fact that the saints do not seem to be any exception to the rule." Punishment made clear to the natives "that we, every one of us, came here for the single purpose of doing them good and their eternal salvation." ... See MoreSee Less

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Oregon-California Trails Association

4 days ago

On this day in history, May 30, 1854, President Franklin Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, allowing the notion of "popular sovereignty" in determining if a territory would be a slave state or a free state. This act set the stage for the violent Kansas-Missouri border wars where the Missouri "Border Ruffians" and the Kansas "Jayhawkers" transformed a frontier quarrel over slavery's borders into a national issue

The United States had acquired vast amounts of sparsely-settled land in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, and since the 1840s Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas had sought to establish a territorial government in a portion of the Louisiana Purchase that was still unorganized. Douglas' efforts were stymied by Missouri Senator David Rice Atchison and other Southern leaders who refused to allow the creation of territories that banned slavery; slavery would have been banned because the Missouri Compromise of 1820 outlawed slavery in territory north of latitude 36°30' north. To win the support of Southerners like Atchison, Pierce and Douglas agreed to back the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, with the status of slavery instead decided on the basis of "popular sovereignty." Under popular sovereignty, the citizens of each territory, rather than Congress, would determine whether or not slavery would be allowed.

Douglas' bill to repeal the Missouri Compromise and organize Kansas Territory and Nebraska Territory won approval by a wide margin in the Senate, but faced stronger opposition in the House of Representatives. Though Northern Whigs strongly opposed the bill, the bill passed the House with the support of almost all Southerners and some Northern Democrats. After the passage of the act, pro- and anti-slavery elements flooded into Kansas with the goal of establishing a population that would vote for or against slavery, resulting in a series of armed conflicts known as "Bleeding Kansas." Douglas and Pierce hoped that popular sovereignty would help bring an end to the national debate over slavery, but the Kansas–Nebraska Act outraged many Northerners, giving rise to the anti-slavery Republican Party. Ongoing tensions over slavery would eventually lead to the Civil War.

The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 was a territorial organic act that created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. It was drafted by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas, passed by the 33rd United States Congress, and signed into law by President Franklin Pierce. Douglas introduced the bill with the goal of opening up new lands to development and facilitating construction of a transcontinental railroad, but the Kansas–Nebraska Act is most notable for effectively repealing the Missouri Compromise, stoking national tensions over slavery, and contributing to a series of armed conflicts known as "Bleeding Kansas."

Partly due to the unpopularity of the Kansas–Nebraska Act, Pierce lost his bid for re-nomination at the 1856 Democratic National Convention to James Buchanan. Pierce remains the only elected president who actively sought reelection but was denied his party's nomination for a second term. Republicans nominated John C. Frémont in the 1856 presidential election and campaigned on "Bleeding Kansas" and the unpopularity of the Kansas–Nebraska Act. Buchanan won the election, but Frémont carried a majority of the free states. Two days after Buchanan's inauguration, Chief Justice Roger Taney delivered the Dred Scott decision, which asserted that Congress had no constitutional power to exclude slavery in the territories. Douglas continued to support the doctrine of popular sovereignty, but Buchanan insisted that Democrats respect the Dred Scott decision and its repudiation of federal interference with slavery in the territories.

Guerrilla warfare in Kansas continued throughout Buchanan's presidency and extended into 1860. Buchanan attempted to admit Kansas as a state under the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution, but Kansas voters rejected that constitution in an August 1858 referendum. Anti-slavery delegates won a majority of the elections to the 1859 Kansas constitutional convention, and Kansas won admission as a free state under the anti-slavery Wyandotte Constitution in the final months of Buchanan's presidency. ... See MoreSee Less

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Oregon-California Trails Association

5 days ago

On this date in history, May 29, 1846, Sarah Keyes of the Donner-Reed Party dies and is buried at Alcove Spring, Kansas.

In the winter of 1845-46, Mrs. Keyes, now 70 years old, was not surprised when doctors told her that her health was such that she had only a few months to live. Instead of sitting back and waiting for the end, Mr. Keyes vowed she would use whatever strength remained in her in an effort see her son one more time — a son who had emigrated to Oregon several years earlier.

Her son-in-law James F. Reed agreed to let her accompany him and his family; word was sent to the son in Oregon to meet his mother at Fort Hall in Idaho. But the reunion was not to be. Mrs. Keyes died only a matter of weeks after the wagon train left Independence. During the early morning hours of May 29, 1846, Mrs. Keyes was buried near the Big Blue River in present-day Kansas.

The death of Mrs. Keyes was written about by other members of the wagon train, and under other circumstances might have become part of the folk lore of the trail. Sadly, the name of Mrs. Sarah Keyes is all but lost to history when the party with which she had commenced the trip west subsequently encountered one of the most fearsome experiences in trail history — a tragedy that forever attached the name of the train’s leaders to Donner Pass, California.

On July 12, 1846, Virginia Reed (the 12-year-old granddaughter of Sarah Keyes) wrote to her cousin Mary C. Keyes :

"we came to the blue--the water was so hye we had to stay thare 4 days--in the mean time gramma died, she became speechless the day before she died. We buried her verry decent. We made a nete coffin and buried her under a tree we had a head stone and had her name cut on it and the date and yere verry nice, and at the head of the grave was a tree we cut some letters on it the young men soded it all ofer and put Flores on it We miss her verry much every time we come into the Wagon we look at the bed for her."

In 1891, Virginia wrote about the event again in her memoirs:

"Grandma Keyes improved in health and spirits every day until we came to the Big Blue River, which was so swollen that we could not cross, but had to lie by and make rafts on which to take the wagons over. As soon as we stopped traveling, grandma began to fail, and on the 29th day of May she died. It seemed hard to bury her in the wilderness, and travel on, and we were afraid that the Indians would destroy her grave, but her death here, before our troubles began, was providential, and nowhere on the whole road could we have found so beautiful a resting place. By this time many emigrants had joined our company, and all turned out to assist at the funeral. A coffin was hewn out of a cottonwood tree, and John Denton, a young man from Springfield, found a large grey stone on which he carved with deep letters the name Sarah Keyes; born in Virginia giving age and date of birth. She was buried under the shade of an oak, the slab being placed at the foot of the grave, on which were planted wild flowers growing in the sod. A minister in our party, the Rev. J. A. Cornwall, tried to give words of comfort as we stood about this lonely grave. Strange to say, that grave has never been disturbed."

Edwin Bryant noted in his diary of May 29:

"Last night Mrs. Sarah Keyes, a lady aged seventy, a member of the family of Mr. J. H. Reed, of Illinois, and his mother-in-law, died. Mr. Reed, with his family, is emigrating to California. The deceased Mrs. Keyes, however, did not intend to accompany him farther than Fort Hall, where she expected to meet her son who emigrated to Oregon two or three years since. Her health, from disease and the debility of age, was so feeble, that when she left her home she entertained but faint hopes of being able to endure the hardships of the journey. Her physicians had announced to her that she could live but a short time, and this time she determined to devote to an effort to see her only son once more on earth. Such is a mother's affection! The effort, however, was vain. She expired without seeing her child.

"The event. . . cast a shade of gloom over our whole encampment. . . All recreations were suspended, out of respect for the dead, and to make preparations for the funeral. A cottonwood tree was felled, and the trunk of it split into planks, which being first hewn with an axe and then planed, were constructed into a coffin, in which the remains of the deceased were deposited. A grave was excavated a short distance from the camp, under an oak tree on the right hand side of the trail. A stone was procured, the surface of which being smoothed, it was fashioned into the shape of a tombstone, and the name and age, and the date of the death of the deceased were graved upon it.

"At 2 o'clock P.M., a funeral procession was formed, in which nearly every man, woman and child of the company united, and the corpse of the deceased lady was conveyed to its last resting place in this desolate but beautiful wilderness. Her coffin was lowered into the grave. A prayer was offered to the Throne of Grace by the Rev. Mr. Cornwall. An appropriate hymn was sung by the congregation with much pathos and expression. A funeral discourse was then pronounced by the officiating clergyman, and the services were concluded by another hymn and a benediction. The grave was then closed and carefully sodded with the green turf of the prairie, from whence annually will spring and bloom its brilliant and many-colored flowers. The inscription on the tombstone, and on the tree beneath which is the grave, is as follows: "Mrs. Sarah Keyes, Died May 29, 1846; Aged 70."

"The night is perfectly calm. The crescent moon sheds her pale rays over the dim landscape; the whippoorwill is chanting its lamentations in the neighboring grove; the low and mournful hooting of the owl is heard at a far off distance, and altogether the scene, with its adjuncts around us, is one of peace, beauty and enjoyment."

George McKinstry wrote:

"Mrs Keyes the mother of the wife of Mr Reed of Illinois died of consumption aged 70 had been sick for a long time .... The funeral took place this evening at 2 O’clock which was attended by every member of our Company
Virginia was also right about the grave not being disturbed."

On June 2, former Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs, who was traveling with the party, wrote a letter to the "St. Louis Weekly American." The letter was carried back by a Shawnee Indian, with the newspaper reporting:

"Two deaths had taken place among the California emigrants - one a small child, the child of Judge Morin, and the other a Mrs. Keys, from Springfield, Ill., quite an aged lady and, had been laboring under consumption"

Katherine Wakeman Cooper wrote the article "Patty Reed" for the journal "Overland Monthly" in January-June 1917:

"Patty Reed says it was the greatest grief to her to have her grandmother resting alone in that wilderness, and that night she prayed most earnestly: Dear God, watch over and protect dear Grandmother, and don’t let the Indians dig her up."

William E. Smith wrote in the May 1936 (Vol. 5, No. 2, pages 208 to 212) of the Kansas Historical Society's publication:

"On March 16, 1930, the writer visited Independence crossing. The river was normal and the crossing was about fifty yards wide, with a gravelly bottom on the east side. Numerous floods had left a high bank on the west side. I am informed that this crossing was used a great deal up to the flood of 1903. The small stream emptying into the river just above the ford is still there, although at the time I visited it, it was dry. I followed the little creek up to Alcove Springs, which is about one half mile from the crossing, practically due east. No doubt the spring has changed considerably since Mr. Bryant saw it in 1846. No water was running over the ledge. The stones upon which the names were graven had broken from the ledge and had been washed down the stream a short distance. There were two very fine springs coming out of the ground on the east side."

Today, the location of the grave of Sarah Keyes is unknown but Alcove Spring remains a crown jewel along the Oregon-California Trail. ... See MoreSee Less

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Oregon-California Trails Association

6 days ago

Sailing through Fort Kearny in a Wind Wagon

history.nebraska.gov

This artist’s conception of Samuel Peppard’s wind wagon as it was departing Fort Kearny in May 1860, appeared in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper on July 7 of that year. RG1576-2 (at left).

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