The ones that are in a big hurry start to have problems." They're trying to do this in an orderly fashion, but it varies by train. "They give some indication of how fast you have to move before dinner. "Mostly, you're trying to follow the guidebooks available after the earliest era," she says. "You'd have to be a complete moron to lose the trail."Īs for the "grueling" pace? Woodworth-Ney notes that the journey was more about following instructions than blazing a trail. "The trail is littered with stuff," McNeese says. The Oregon Trail was a mass migration that, in its later years, was almost a traffic jam. 'The ones that are in a big hurry start to have problems.'Īnd even where there were small wagon trains, they'd usually bump into other travelers quickly.
#OREGON TRAIL SCREENSHOT EDITOR FULL#
While a wagon train leader might make a decision for the group, he'd have to do so with the full party's consent. People almost invariably made the trip in wagon trains. The ride out west wasn't a solitary affair where each family set its own pace, tapping the space bar until they reached their new home. The reality: Unfortunately, this may be the biggest misconception born from years of playing Oregon Trail. It usually took a toll on your party's health, but it did let you finish the game before lunch. The game: In Oregon Trail, you set the pace to "grueling" so that your wagon could finish ahead of your friends. 2) Traveling at a "grueling" pace was less fun than it sounds Hundreds died pulling all of their belongings behind them in handcarts (a harrowing journey that makes it the perfect Oregon Trail sequel). Woodworth-Ney notes that the Mormon Trail carried the Mormon handcart pioneers of 1856-1860, who lacked the money for traditional wagon teams and used handcarts instead. There were horses, mules, and sometimes even stranger forms of transport. That said, not everyone took oxen on the trail. "Your oxen would eat anything, and nobody was tempted to steal them. "Oxen are more durable and cheaper to purchase than a horse or mule," McNeese says. The reality: On the actual Oregon Trail, oxen were the best choice for traveling, and they were quite common in 1848, when the video game was set. The game: At the start of Oregon Trail (the game), most people stocked up on yokes because traveling with a team of oxen was the only option. Here are nine myths you learned because of the way you played the game: 1) Not everyone used oxen. But other strategies - like hunting for thousands of pounds of buffalo - would have been far more dangerous than the game suggested. Some of the more popular Oregon Trail strategies we all loved as kids - like starting out as a banker or stocking up on oxen - would have worked out well on the real Oregon Trail.
Their verdict? In a lot of ways, the way you played the game was surprisingly accurate. To find out, I called up two historians: Tim McNeese, chair of the history department at York College and author of Oregon Trail: Pathway to the West and Laura Woodworth-Ney, provost at Idaho State University and author of Women in the American West. It was a joy (and you can play the game online here).īut how much did that game resemble the real-life Oregon Trail, which took as many as 400,000 settlers to the West from the 1830s to late 1860s? They stocked up on oxen, hunted for buffalo, and watched their most beloved family members die of dysentery. Millions of kids grew up playing Oregon Trail on their computers.
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