On September 15, 1883, the first regularly scheduled Northern Pacific transcontinental passenger train to Portland arrived by way of the OR&N's trackage from Wallula, Washington, about two hundred miles up the Columbia River.
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The East Side Company becomes the first railroad to operate in Portland in 1869, running on 20 miles of track to New Era, and was soon reorganized to become the Oregon & California Railroad Co.
The journey from Texas to Oregon by wagon was a long and arduous undertaking. It was a journey of more than 2,000 miles, much of it through hostile terrain, with few supplies and no promise of a safe arrival. For those who made the journey in the mid-1800's, it could take up to six months or more.
Union Pacific Railroad extended its service through its subsidiary, Utah and Northern Railway, reaching Beaver, Idaho in 1879 and Monida, on the Montana-Idaho border, in March of 1880. This line was extended to Garrison, Montana by 1883.
Some travelers continued to take wagons over the old trail as late as the 1920s. Why? Usually because they didn't have the money to buy train tickets to take their families west, or they had livestock that needed herding along, but sometimes just because they loved the old-timey adventure of it.
When a family decided to join a wagon train, it often had to save money for three to five years before it could even begin the journey. The wagon cost around $400. The cost of the trip with supplies could be as much as $1,000.
The wagon train is probably one of those images. What exactly was a wagon train? It was a group of covered wagons, usually around 100 of them. These carried people and their supplies to the West before there was a transcontinental railroad.
The covered wagon made 8 to 20 miles per day depending upon weather, roadway conditions and the health of the travelers. It could take up to six months or longer to reach their destination.