US 395, Part 23: Umatilla County (OR 37/US 730/Old US 395 and US 395/I-84/US 30 to Washington State Line)

As mentioned in Part 22, modern US 395 travels almost entirely on Interstate asphalt between Pendleton and Kennewick, WA, except for a small piece between Stanfield and Umatilla. The first of these Interstate alignments is modern-day Interstate 84, along OH #6 which is actually officially the Old Oregon Trail, to which US 395 was re-routed in 1975 when it was completed in the form of Interstate 80N (refer to the maps from Part 22 for the former and intermediate alignments). By 1980, as part of AASHTO's elimination of suffixed routes, I-80N was renumbered to I-84. US 30 is also carried by this particular Interstate alignment and Oregon highway number. For the trivia buffs, there is an eastern I-84.

The second alignment is along Interstate 82, a violation in Interstate numbering as it runs north of I-84, just south of the Columbia River to the state line as OH #70 (McNary Hwy) and thence on to west of Kennewick, WA. In reality, I-84 was the misnumbered route, as I-82 had its number first. When I-82 was completed in 1987, as we previously noted, US 395 was shifted to it. We will travel both these alignments in this Part in Division 2, as well as the conclusion of OR 37 and US 730 to the Washington state line in Division 1 for the former non-Interstate routing (see Part 22 for this routing as well).

It is impossible to give the length and breadth of American pioneer history carried on the Oregon Trail, of which I-84 is the inheritor in Oregon; nevertheless, I present a brief summary for background. Although known in antiquity to Indian tribes, it was not until 1804 when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark made their seminal expedition west that white men discovered the overland routes used by the Native Americans for generations. Lewis and Clark did not travel the Oregon Trail (US 395 does also run along what is now signed the Lewis and Clark Trail in Part 24, so we will talk about them there), but they laid the groundwork for others to follow into what was then termed the Great Desert. Most of this first generation over the next several decades were fur trappers, including a young Kit Carson (Part 11), Jim Beckwourth (Part 13), Jedidiah Smith and Manuel Lisa, and many of these "mountain men" would come to know more about the terrain of the West than anyone alive, even many Indians; their Mountain Men Rendezvous at the Green River, starting in 1825, became legendary spots to trade goods and trail secrets alike until the last meeting in 1840.

Much of the fur sales the earliest trappers generated were made to the British, who were exerting territorial pressure southward from British Columbia, often through their Hudson's Bay Company. American corporate and political interests also became attracted to this growing trade in fur, and a friend of Thomas Jefferson's named John Jacob Astor (right) founded the Pacific Fur Company in New York at Jefferson's request in 1810. To establish a base of operations, Astor sent the ship Tonquin, captained by the ruthless Jonathan Thorn, on a brutal and almost mutinous voyage around the tip of South America to establish Fort Astor (later Astoria) on the mouth of the Columbia River in 1811 -- very near, as it happens, where Lewis and Clark had established Fort Clatsop in 1805 (see Part 24). The miserable but ultimately successful mission of the Tonquin is related in this article; after establishing the fort, however, the cruel Thorn pushed further north and there his evil ways caught up with him as his viciousness with the local Indians provoked them to attack the ship and massacre the crew. In desperation, a wounded sailor named Thomas Lewis set fire to the ship's powder magazine and detonated it in a massive explosion, sending the ship, himself and several hundred Salish Indians to the bottom of the Pacific.

In parallel, Astor had hedged his bets by sending an overland survey team out simultaneously. This was the Astor-Hunt party we mentioned in Part 20 and its experience was nearly as rough as the Tonquin; Astor's lieutenant Wilson Price Hunt, starting in 1811, was able to follow Lewis and Clark's route as far west as the modern Dakotas but adopted an overland route across the Union Pass instead near what is now Jackson Hole, WY. This turned out to be tremendously ill-advised and the party barely struggled into Fort Astor by the spring of 1812.

From Astor's base, Robert Stuart set out in the winter of 1812 to return to St. Louis and consult with his superiors over these matters and encroachment by British trappers. (In his absence, the British North West Company arrived during the spring of 1813 and convinced the remaining inhabitants of Fort Astor to sell out in the aftermath of the War of 1812. With the Royal Navy on the way to take the fort by force, the inhabitants decided getting paid to be Fort George wasn't so bad after all.) Stuart, likely acting on the tale of woe the Astor-Hunt party related, took a route further south of Lewis and Clark's back to Missouri instead and in doing so established the South Pass (approximately 7,550') in what would become the state of Wyoming across the Continental Divide; thus was the prototype of the Oregon Trail first traversed, but done so west to east. The South Pass is still in use today, now by WY 28 between US 191 and US 287. Not some little cliff gorge, the Pass is actually almost twenty miles wide! From the South Pass, the Oregon Trail (and in fact most of the resulting overland routes) primarily followed the course of the Platte River east. There was no specific routing for any of the various trails that would follow, but Stuart's discovery was the key to all of them.

The return trip was harsh -- one of Stuart's men went insane along the trek -- but Astor was delighted by the discovery of this potentially profitable route and kept it secret as a trade advantage. (Astor was so successful at keeping the South Pass private that when Jedidiah Smith discovered it on his own in the 1820s, he was incorrectly credited as the first man to walk the route.) However, other interests were also exploring possible overland approaches. One such exploration also occurred in the 1820s when Hudson's Bay Company contractor Peter Skene Ogden -- the one who 'cursed' the Malheur in Part 20 -- was banished to British Columbia in 1824 after he attempted to lead a mutiny in an HBC outpost, among other indelicate acts. Ogden's temper was even worse on the west coast, and the senior official at Fort Vancouver decided he would be better off as a solitary explorer. This proved to be exactly right. Ogden's discoveries in the region were significant and voluminous, and promptly and proudly reported back to his superiors who then relayed them to the United Kingdom. Ironically, they rapidly wound up in American hands, who would use these new detailed maps to displace the British presence over the next few decades.

Enhanced by a growing number of scouts familiar with the territory (especially as landmarks such as Chimney Rock could only be recognized by experience) and increasingly better cartography thanks to the efforts of Ogden and others, wagon trains first started to use parts of this route by the early 1830s. One such expedition was led by Joseph Walker and B. L. E. de Bonneville (as mentioned in Part 9), who used the South Pass to admit wagons into the West in 1833; Joseph Walker even used his own Walker Pass (now traversed by CA 178) for wagon trains after its establishment. However, the first real use of the Oregon Trail was in 1834 when Nathaniel Wyeth and Jason Lee led the first people over the true route to settle in Oregon Country. Their aim was heavenly -- that is, the conversion of the Indians to Christianity -- and the Wyeth-Lee party, with the full backing of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, conducted its first sermon in the Oregon Country on 27 July. Lee's missionary operations in the Willamette Valley, unfortunately, failed to achieve any immediate results practically or spiritually. (However, the Oregon Institute he established at Mission Hill would become today's Willamette University.) He died in 1845, discharged by his organization for failing to justify the expense of maintaining his frontier mission.

Nevertheless, Lee's story did prove that the trail did go somewhere, and others stepped up to try their luck. In 1841, the Bidwell-Bartleson (or Bartleson-Bidwell, if you prefer) party set out along the trail, splitting along the way into the southern party we met in Part 9, and the northern party which remained in Oregon. Even John Fremont (Part 2) got into the act, exploring the trail as part of his western expeditions; just a few years later, five thousand emigrants made the trek in 1845, and Brigham Young led his Mormon Brigade over it to Utah in 1847. The floodgates opened, though, when James Marshall found gold at Sutter's mill in California and in 1849, 30,000 emigrants crammed the trail. A cholera epidemic only diminished it slightly, and the count rebounded sharply with a whopping 70,000 crossing between 1852 and 1853. Although slowed by Indian wars and the Civil War, the overland wagon trails remained voluminous well into the 1860s and alternate trails were frequently employed to bypass popular destinations. Finally, the Union Pacific Railroad Company came into existence in 1866 and the end of the wagon train era became visible at last.

When the transcontinental railroad was complete in 1869, traffic declined quickly. Some wagon trains still made the trek, particularly poorer emigrants who could not afford the train, but even this number dwindled; although there are some reports of wagon trains along the route as late as 1912, most authorities point to Ezra Meeker as the last wagon to officially brave the trail in 1906. Meeker's efforts were purely altruistic, as an early traveler of the trail who tried to raise awareness and preserve memories of the route before the automobile and locomotive erased the Oregon Trail from the American consciousness forever. It is through his efforts that the Oregon Trail remains famous today. The Oregon Trail History Library includes many exceptional and detailed treatises on the Oregon Trail, including The Road to Oregon in electronic format which is excellent reading for grownups and kids alike.