70 Fun Facts About Oregon Trail

Three student teachers from which Minnesota school wrote the original Oregon Trail in 1971?

Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann and Paul Dillenberger built it in about two weeks for an eighth-grade history unit, then deleted it from the school district's computer when the semester ended.

In what year did the very first version of The Oregon Trail debut in a Minneapolis junior-high classroom?

It ran on an HP 2100 minicomputer that students reached through a single teleprinter, so the game had no graphics at all.

In the original teleprinter version, what word did players have to type to fire their gun while hunting?

Later versions randomised the word between BANG and POW, and typing it faster earned more food; a misspelling meant the shot did nothing.

Which four-letter organisation produced and distributed The Oregon Trail from 1975?

The Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium was state-funded and gave the game to Minnesota schools for free while selling it elsewhere.

Which future music superstar was among the Minneapolis students who play-tested the first version?

Heinemann and Dillenberger let students at Bryant Junior High try it, and the kids stayed late at school for another turn.

In the 1985 game, the wagon party sets out from which town on the Missouri River?

The real trail had many jumping-off points, but the game picked the classic one, with the journey set in 1848.

Where does the journey end in the 1985 game?

The 1971 original had aimed for Oregon City instead; both are in the same fertile valley west of the Cascades.

Which of these is one of the three professions a player can choose at the start of the 1985 game?

Banker, carpenter and farmer doubled as difficulty levels, each starting with a different amount of cash.

In the 1985 game, where do you buy oxen, food, clothing, ammunition and spare parts before setting off?

Prices for the same supplies rise the further along the trail you get, so stocking up in town pays off.

Which of these is one of the ways to cross a river in the 1985 game?

Fording, caulking and (at some crossings) paying for a ferry were the choices, and the odds depended on the river's depth and the weather.

On the last leg of The Oregon Trail (1985), players can pay a toll or raft down which river?

The rafting sequence was nearly cut for time and was rebuilt at the last minute as a simple rock-dodging game in Applesoft BASIC.

What is the maximum food weight you can carry back to the wagon in Oregon Trail's 1985 hunting minigame?

The cap was a deliberate history lesson: a real hunter could only haul so much meat back before it spoiled.

Who was the lead designer of the 1985 graphical remake of The Oregon Trail?

Bouchard's guiding rule was that the fun should come from immersing the player in an accurate experience, not from lecturing them about history.

Which grim message from the game became a popular T-shirt slogan?

The 1985 team removed the original's medicine-and-doctor system as inaccurate and replaced it with several distinct diseases.

In which year was The Oregon Trail inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame?

It was the first educational game to get in, and stayed the only one until Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? joined in 2021.

Across all its versions, roughly how many copies of The Oregon Trail had been sold by 2011?

For years the game came bundled with school computers, which is how so many children ended up playing it without anyone buying it for them.

Which company bought MECC in 1995 and published the next few games in the series?

MECC had only become a publicly traded company the year before; it was shut down entirely in 1999.

Which educational game joined The Oregon Trail in The Strong museum's hall of fame in 2021?

Both games date from 1985 and both defined the edutainment shelf of American classrooms.

When Time magazine ranked the 50 best video games of all time in 2016, where did The Oregon Trail place?

Time credited it with introducing several generations to video games in the first place.

Which of these was a real MECC spin-off game in the same series?

The Yukon Trail, Africa Trail and MayaQuest: The Mystery Trail rounded out the family.

What is the name of the 2012 parody game that swapped the pioneers for survivors of a zombie apocalypse?

It was made by a studio called The Men Who Wear Many Hats and released for browsers, iOS and Android.

The 2021 remake of The Oregon Trail, developed by Gameloft, launched first on which subscription service?

Its creative director consulted Native American scholars to remove stereotypes, and the game acknowledges that for Native nations colonisation was an invasion, not an adventure.

In the 1975 mainframe version, the trip was played as roughly how many rounds, each standing for two weeks?

Rawitsch recalibrated the odds of storms, breakdowns and other events for that release using real diaries from the trail.

In the 1985 hunting minigame, how did the game show that an animal had been shot?

That was a placeholder because the proper death graphics weren't finished for playtesting, but the children found it so funny the team kept it.

StarKid Productions turned the game into a parody stage musical in 2014. What was it called?

It premiered in Chicago and was later posted in full on YouTube, like StarKid's earlier hit A Very Potter Musical.

The famous 1985 graphical version of The Oregon Trail was first released for which computer?

MS-DOS, Mac and Windows ports followed between 1990 and 1993, and a Basic Fun handheld version arrived in 2018.

In which programming language was the 1971 original written?

The whole thing was about 800 lines, which the trio printed out before deleting it, allowing Rawitsch to retype it for MECC three years later.

Don Rawitsch published the game's full source code in the May–June 1978 issue of which magazine?

He included some of the historical data he had used to tune the odds of disasters along the trail.

In what year was Oregon Trail II released?

A 25th Anniversary Limited Edition came in a commemorative wooden box with a strategy guide and a certificate of authenticity.

When MECC went public in 1994, The Oregon Trail made up roughly what share of annual revenue?

Nine years after release it was still the company's flagship product.

Roughly how long was the historic Oregon Trail from the Missouri River to Oregon?

The eastern half crossed today's Kansas, Nebraska and Wyoming; the western half crossed Idaho and Oregon.

Which shallow, muddy river did the trail follow across the plains, 'too thin to plow and too thick to drink'?

It was useless for boats but its flat valley made a natural wagon road heading almost due west, with grass, water and buffalo along the way.

Which army post, established in 1848, was the first place on the Oregon Trail to buy supplies or mail a letter?

Nearly every feeder route from Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska converged near it before heading up the Platte.

Fort Laramie, the trail's major stop in Wyoming, stands where the Laramie River meets which other river?

It started life as the private fur post Fort William in 1834 and was renamed Fort John before the army bought it in 1849.

Which granite landmark on the Sweetwater River did Father De Smet nickname the 'Register of the Desert'?

Jedediah Smith's party cached their furs beneath it on July 4, 1824, which is one story of how it got its name.

By which date did wagon parties hope to reach the granite rock on the Sweetwater River to beat the snows?

That target date is why the landmark carries the name of America's national holiday.

Who led the first recorded crossing of South Pass in October 1812, returning east from Astoria?

Fear of a Crow war party pushed his group south, where they stumbled onto the wide, easy pass over the Continental Divide that every wagon would later use.

Chimney Rock, the spire that appears in so many trail diaries, stands in which present-day state?

It rises more than 300 feet above the North Platte valley and was probably first seen by non-natives during Robert Stuart's 1813 journey east.

The Barlow Road, opened in 1846 as the trail's final stretch, bypassed which mountain?

Before it existed, emigrants at The Dalles had to disassemble their wagons and float everything down the Columbia River.

How much did the Barlow Road toll gate charge per wagon?

Livestock cost 10 cents a head on top, and it was still cheaper and safer than rafting a family down the Columbia.

In which year did the 'Great Migration' wagon train of an estimated 700 to 1,000 emigrants set out for Oregon?

Marcus Whitman joined the train and, over the objections of Hudson's Bay Company agents at Fort Hall, insisted the wagons could be driven all the way to Oregon.

In 1836, what did Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding become the first white women to do?

Their party was also the first to take wagons as far as Fort Hall, where their guides talked them into abandoning them.

By 1842, which animal did most emigrants prefer for pulling their wagons?

They were docile, could live on prairie grass and sage, and cost about a third as much as mules; the catch was that shoeing a cloven hoof took several men.

What nickname was given to the light covered farm wagons that most families drove west?

The heavier Conestoga was too much for oxen to haul 2,000 miles, so the ship-like white canvas top ended up on ordinary farm wagons.

Which disease was the biggest killer on the trail during the epidemic years of 1849 to 1855?

Crowded camps at the few freshwater springs along the Platte spread it; some travellers were healthy at breakfast and dead by nightfall.

Use of the trail fell away sharply after what was completed in 1869?

By rail the trip took seven days and could cost as little as $65, against four to five months by wagon.

About how many settlers, miners and ranchers used the Oregon Trail and its offshoots to head west?

Between 1840 and 1860 the US population grew by 14 million, so only a tiny fraction of Americans ever made the trip.

Oregon- and California-bound wagon trains typically averaged about how many miles a day?

Mormon trains, with more women and children, moved slower and took about 100 days to reach Salt Lake City.

On the treeless prairie stretch of the route, what did emigrants gather to fuel their cooking fires?

The 'chips' burned fast in a breeze, and it could take two bushels of them to cook a single meal.

Which town, then the proposed territorial capital, was the trail's official end point?

Many families never got that far, stopping wherever along the way looked promising and starting the towns that still line the route.

Which US coin was struck on and off between 1926 and 1939 to commemorate the Oregon Trail?

Ezra Meeker, who had travelled the trail in 1852, lobbied Congress for it at the age of 95 to fund markers along the route.

The 1930 western The Big Trail gave which actor his first starring role?

He played a fur trapper leading the settlers; it would be nearly a decade before Stagecoach made him a star.

Which 2021 Yellowstone prequel follows the Dutton family on the Oregon Trail from Texas to Montana?

The show was one of several trail dramas, following NBC's short-lived 1977 series The Oregon Trail starring Rod Taylor.

Which folk singer wrote and recorded a song called 'Oregon Trail' while travelling the region in 1941?

It opened his Columbia River Collection, the batch of songs he wrote on a one-month government contract about the Bonneville dam projects.

Fort Hall, the Snake River trading post in Idaho, was sold in 1837 to which fur company?

Its agents kept telling emigrants to ditch their wagons there and continue with pack animals, advice Marcus Whitman famously ignored in 1843.

In 1847, Brigham Young's pioneers left the main trail at which stop for the Salt Lake Valley?

They followed and improved the Hastings Cutoff, the same shortcut that had doomed the Donner Party the year before.

Wyoming's Sublette–Greenwood Cutoff saved 70 miles but crossed roughly how many miles of waterless desert?

Gold-rushers who chose speed over safety loved it: it cut almost seven days but offered no water, grass or fuel the whole way.

The ill-fated Donner Party of 1846 left the main trail to try which shortcut?

They were trapped by snow in the Sierra Nevada that November, and 33 people had died by the time the last survivor was rescued in April.

Who starred in NBC's short-lived 1977 television series The Oregon Trail, cancelled after six episodes?

The BBC later aired the unshown episodes, so British viewers saw more of the series than Americans did.

Which fur trader brought the first wagons over South Pass in 1830?

His crew dug out gullies and cleared brush on the way to a rendezvous on the Green River near today's Big Piney, Wyoming.

The 1985 game divides the route into how many segments, each ending at a landmark like a fort or river crossing?

Designer Philip Bouchard picked the landmarks with researcher Shirley Keran, and added cut-offs so players could skip a fort in exchange for a shorter route.

The 1839 Peoria Party marched west under a flag bearing which motto?

They called themselves the Oregon Dragoons; the group fell apart near Bent's Fort, though nine of the eighteen men eventually made it.

According to diaries, the average trip in 1849 took about how many days?

Ferries, bridges and toll roads gradually shaved that to about 140 days a decade later.

Whose wagons were the first to reach the Columbia River overland, in September 1840?

They drove three wagons from Fort Hall to Fort Walla Walla, opening the trail's last leg to wagons.

Which 1841 group is credited as the first emigrants to use the Oregon Trail to head west?

About half the group peeled off at Soda Springs, Idaho, for Oregon while the rest pushed on to California.

Roughly what share of Oregon's male population left for California in 1848 to chase gold?

Many came back with gold that helped jump-start the Oregon economy.

How many pounds of flour did guidebook author T. H. Jefferson recommend per adult?

Lansford Hastings gave the same figure, plus 150 pounds of 'bacon', meaning any salt pork.

What desperate-times trail food earned the nickname 'bush fish'?

Wild berries along the Platte helped keep scurvy infrequent on the trail itself.

Up to how many bushels of buffalo chips did it take to heat a single meal?

Collecting the chips was a chore even very young children could do, and memoirs invariably mention it.

According to historian John Unruh, roughly what was the death rate on the overland trails?

That works out to about 16,000 of some 400,000 pioneers; graves were often hidden in the trail itself.