Editing Oregon Trail (section)

===Great Migration of 1843===
[[File:ColumbiaAmericasGreatHighway040.png|thumb|A wagon lashed to a raft for the last stage of the emigration.]]

In what was dubbed "The Great Migration of 1843" or the "Wagon Train of 1843", an estimated 700 to 1,000 emigrants left for Oregon.<ref>{{Cite web |url = http://www.peak.org/~mransom/pioneers.html |title = The Wagon Train of 1843: The Great Migration |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080531061021/http://www.peak.org/~mransom/pioneers.html |archive-date = May 31, 2008 |access-date = December 22, 2007 }}</ref><ref>[https://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/events/1840_1850.htm Events in The West: 1840–1850] PBS. Retrieved December 22, 2007.</ref> They were led initially by John Gantt, a former U.S. Army captain and fur trader who was contracted to guide the train to Fort Hall for $1 per person. The winter before, Marcus Whitman had made a brutal midwinter trip from Oregon to St. Louis to appeal a decision by his mission backers to abandon several of the Oregon missions. He joined the wagon train at the Platte River for the return trip. When the pioneers were told at Fort Hall by agents from the Hudson's Bay Company that they should abandon their wagons there and use pack animals the rest of the way, Whitman disagreed and volunteered to lead the wagons to Oregon. He believed the wagon trains were large enough that they could build whatever road improvements they needed to make the trip with their wagons. The biggest obstacle they faced was in the [[Blue Mountains (Oregon)|Blue Mountains]] of Oregon, where they had to cut and clear a trail through heavy timber. The wagons were stopped at [[The Dalles, Oregon|The Dalles]], Oregon, by the lack of a road around Mount Hood. The wagons had to be disassembled and floated down the treacherous Columbia River and the animals herded over the rough [[Lolo Pass (Oregon)|Lolo trail]] to get by Mt. Hood. Nearly all of the settlers in the 1843 wagon trains arrived in the Willamette Valley by early October. A passable wagon trail now existed from the Missouri River to The Dalles. Jesse Applegate's account of the emigration, "[[A Day with the Cow Column in 1843]]", has been described as "the best bit of literature left to us by any participant in the [Oregon] pioneer movement..."<ref>{{cite journal|title=Reviews|journal=Oregon Historical Quarterly|volume=34|number=4|year=1935}}</ref> and has been republished several times from 1868 to 1990.<ref>{{cite journal |title=[[wikisource:en:Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 1/A Day with the Cow Column in 1843|A Day with the Cow Column in 1843]] |journal=Oregon Historical Quarterly |year=1900 }}</ref>

In 1846, the [[Barlow Road]] was completed around Mount Hood, providing a rough but completely passable wagon trail from the Missouri River to the Willamette Valley, about {{convert|2000|mi|km}}.