Pioneer Days of Oregon History: All Volumes

The Oregon Trail stretched over two thousand miles, from the Missouri River to the valleys in Oregon.

By the mid-nineteenth century hundreds of thousands of men, women and children were making this arduous journey to start a new life in the northwest of the United States.

But who were these emigrants and why were they willing to risk everything to reach Oregon?

What did they expect to find there and what were the realities of their new lives once they had reached their destination?

S. A. Clarke’s wonderful, two-volume, Pioneer Days of Oregon History provides us with in depth answers to these questions as it explains what life was truly like for those men, women and children who ventured to the state of Oregon.

The book begins with the early history of Oregon during the early nineteenth century when explorers first began to travel through its wilderness. Clarke explains how figures such as Lewis and Clarke were shortly followed by trappers and traders who wished to exploit the region’s riches.

The great wave of emigration to Oregon truly began in the mid-1840s and Clarke uncovers how these settlers survived and thrived on the frontier as they learnt to cooperate with the Native American tribes that lived near them and followed the examples of earlier explorers who preceded them.

Throughout the book short biographies are given of some of the most important men and women who shaped the history of Oregon, thus providing insight into what it took to form this great state.

Clarke had emigrated to Oregon in 1850 and so had experienced what life was like to be a pioneer in this frontier region. His book is drawn from his own experiences as well as conversations that he had with fellow settlers and other early histories of the state of Oregon.

Pioneer Days of Oregon History truly captures the spirit of the emigrants who left their homes in the West for new lives in the East. It presents frontier Oregon in its most beautiful and rugged state.

S. A. Clarke was a poet and early journalist of the U.S. state of Oregon. He had left the east to go gold prospecting in California in 1849 before deciding to settle in Oregon. He lived for much of his life just south of Salem, Oregon, and passed away there in 1909. His book Pioneer Days of Oregon History was first published in 1905.