Gerald Rawling

Once Lewis and Clark had blazed the trail to the West, writes Gerald Rawling, traders and trappers began to follow in their footsteps, as they did so opening up vast new tracts of the “Great American Desert.”

Most famous of the three chief routes that led to the promised lands of the Far West was the so-called Oregon Trail. By the middle forties, writes Gerald Rawling, the popular American interest in Oregon had become a fever.