It Happened on the Oregon Trail includes twenty-nine unusual, remarkable, little known events that happened along the trail from Independence, Missouri to Oregon's Willamette Valley. From Rufus K. Porter's brilliant plan to fly people to Oregon in hot air balloons, to the plight of a young girl who climbed Independence Rock to carve her name and was left behind by her wagon party, this book reveals the hidden stories about the trail.

The word cowboy conjures up vivid images of rugged men on saddled horses--men lassoing cattle, riding bulls, or brandishing guns in a shoot-out. White men, as Hollywood remembers them. What is woefully missing from these scenes is their counterparts: the black cowboys who made up one-fourth of the wranglers and rodeo riders. This book tells their story. When the Civil War ended, black men left the Old South in large numbers to seek a living in the Old West--industrious men resolved to carve out a life for themselves on the wild, roaming plains. Some had experience working cattle from their...

Many of the events that took place along the Oregon Trail are well known--the perils the Applegate family faced as they rafted down the raging Columbia River, the plight of the Donner Party as they found themselves snowbound and starving at Truckee Lake. But do you know the whole story? It Happened on the Oregon Trail reveals the stories of these well-known events as well as many lesser-known happenings, providing insights about the adventurous emigrants who, beginning in the 1840s, headed west in covered wagons in search of a better life. The hardships and the joys of the 2000-mile journey...