Long before Oregon was a state, it was a destination somewhere beyond the western horizon.

Thousands of travelers packed their belongings into wagons, left familiar homes behind, and began a journey that could take months to complete. For many, the Willamette Valley waited at the other end. Between here and there were hundreds of miles of prairie, rivers, mountains, broken equipment, illness, campfires, ordinary meals, difficult decisions, and mornings when the only option was to get up and keep moving.

In this episode, we follow the Oregon Trail from inside the journey.

Rather than simply retracing dates and landmarks, we imagine the daily lives of the people traveling west. We consider what they packed, what they left behind, how quickly extraordinary circumstances became everyday routines, and what it might have felt like to  ...