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HOW TO USE THIS SITE
The Time Frame is about 100 pages long and mixes descriptions of important events and people with details, trivia, and a list of sources. There's a minimum of interpretation (why and how) and a lot of who, when, what, and where.
If you have a specific
YEAR in mind, just scroll down to the year you want. Or jump off onto the Oregon Trail and browse: Lewis and Clark arrived in 1805, Russians and Aleuts in 1808, shipwrecked Japanese sailors in 1833, the first wagon train in 1841….
If you have a
NAME in mind but don't know the year, there are two ways to go ahead. You could identify the year with the "Find" feature on your web browser/navigator. On Netscape, for instance, open the "Edit" menu at the top of the page. Then choose "Find in Page". You'll see a place to type in the name you want to research. Your browser/navigator then will automatically take you to the first place in the Time Frame where that name appears. For example, if you typed "Daniel Boone," your browser would automatically take you to 1811, on page 14 of the Time Frame. Before you begin your search you need to enter the Oregon Trail (just click "Oregon Trail" at the bottom of this page).Another way to identify the year is to go to the
Oregon Pioneers web site. At this site you'll find lists of who arrived in the Northwest on the Oregon Trail and when they got here. Once you know the year, come on back to this site and look it up.
If you are looking for
SOURCES, then read on: At the end of each year's entry, you'll find a list of Trail travelers who kept journals or diaries during that particular year plus other suggested primary sources. Next to the writer's name you'll see another name in parentheses (such as OHS MS, Bancroft, Holmes, etc). If you wish to know more bibliographical information about a source (like when and where it was published) look up the name in parentheses in the Bibliography for Time Frame--it lists some individual journals and several compilations of diaries. For more sources about or by a particular Trail emigrant check the website The Oregon Territory . The journals are listed at the Oregon Territory site in the year the writer traveled to the Pacific Northwest. For example, Sargent Patrick Gass's journal of the Lewis and Clark Expedition is listed on the Oregon Trail name list website under the name Gass, Patrick in 1804.The Oregon Trail Time Frame is a companion piece for the list of mini-biographies and historical sources on Stephenie Flora's web site at
http://www.teleport.com/~sflora/ortrail and for a printed version at the Oregon Historical Society Library, 1200 SW Park, Portland 97205 titled "Oregon Explorers and Early Oregon Trail Emigrants"Your comments, additions, and corrections are always welcome.
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