I always wonder how any of the 49’ers got here…granted it’s pretty easy trucking till you hit say, Denver, or in the south, Dallas. After that point you have your choice - either desert (where the ground is far from flat, and no water) or mountains, or both. How did they get carraiges, horses, belongings through all these obstactles? Why didn’t more people give up and stop? Even if you took every pass, and walked down/up every river valley, it would still be close to impossible to make it.
A lot of people did give up and stop. However, a lot of people made it through. Perhaps people had a bit more determination in the 19th Century. It’s not like their lives were that great back on the East Coast.
As for other 49ers, if you could afford it, you could always go by ship. You could sail to Panama, take the railway across the Isthmus, then catch a ship on the other side and sail in to San Francisco.
I recently (ok, a year ago) attended a tour at the End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center in Oregon City. I don’t know about the old '49’s exactly, but a lot of the pioneers heading out this way started in Missouri and came out in covered wagons pulled by oxen. They had to sell a lot of possessions so they wouldn’t create too heavy of a load, and even then furniture and other heavy items were often dumped along the way.
From the Oregon Trail FAQ at http://www.endoftheoregontrail.org/faq.html
What is the Oregon Trail?
In its earliest days, the Oregon Trail was a 2000 mile long string of rivers and natural landmarks that could be followed from Missouri to Oregon. It was easy to get lost without a guide who knew the way. In later years, after thousands of pioneers had followed the Oregon Trail to settle in the Oregon Country, there were well-worn paths to follow. On the other hand, there were also local roads, military roads, and even shortcuts, so while it was harder to get really lost, it was still easy to take a wrong turn.
Where did the Oregon Trail begin and end?
Well, that depends on how you look at it. Officially, according to an act of Congress, it begins in Independence, Missouri, and ends in Oregon City, Oregon. To the settlers, though, the trail to the Oregon Country was a five-month trip from their old home in the East to their new home in the West. It was different for every family. Some people got ready to leave the East, or “jump off” as they called it, in towns like St. Joseph or Council Bluffs, and others jumped off from their old homes in Illinois or Missouri and picked up the Oregon Trail in the countryside. Along the way, they could choose to take shortcuts or stick to the main trunk of the Trail, and the end of their journey didn’t really come until they settled a claim somewhere in the vast Oregon Country.
There’s a lot more info at:
http://www.endoftheoregontrail.org/
and http://www.pbs.org/opb/oregontrail/
I hope this helps some 
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
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And since I never like to miss an opportunity to talk about my family tree:
My father’s parents families both came from Wisconsin around the turn of the century; however (and this seems kinda ironic to me), they never met until settling in Tillamook Co., Oregon. Dad always told me that his father’s family, the Barbers, were people of means and came around the horn of South America in a steam ship. Meanwhile his mother’s family, the Hodgdons, came over in a covered wagon. Too late to be an official Oregon Trail family, though. Sigh
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Yeah, great, there was a trail. I’ve gone backpacking in the mountains - and there is no way that you could get oxen and people and carraiges through some of those passes - besides, if it was so easy, there would be an Interstate right down the trail. Instead, we blasted over/through/beside countless mountains to make skinny 4 lane roads that go through the mountains…it still seems implausible.
Okay, smartass. You tell us. How did they get there?
You’re saying you’re skeptical? This isn’t a “theory” about how people got here, it’s documented quite well. You just need to do the research. Did you even go to any of the links I gave you? Well, here’s another that details exactly where the trail started, where it stopped, the cities and landmarks along the way, and how to find and follow markers so you too can follow the trail. http://www.endoftheoregontrail.org/road2oregon/sa11gohere.html
If clicking on that link is too hard, here are a couple excerpts. Tell me, have you traveled this trail and climbed these mountains??
"The route started on the banks of the Missouri River, originally at Independence, then Westport, then Weston across from Fort Leavenworth. The first route followed the Santa Fe Trail into Kansas Territory. The Westport Road bypassed the Santa Fe Trail, went through Shawnee Mission in Kansas, and caught up with the Oregon Trail at Lawrence. The Weston route caught up with the main trunk of the Trail at the Big Blue River.
"Angling across northeastern Kansas and southeastern Nebraska, the Oregon Trail is joined by the road from St. Joseph. For several hundred miles the Trail was punctuated by Pony Express stations. Hollenberg Station in Kansas is well preserved; Rock Creek Station in Nebraska was the site of a shooting that brought fame to Wild Bill Hickok.
"The Platte River – too thick to drink and too thin to plow, the pioneers complained – was the major emigrant highway across the plains. The Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails all followed the Platte River, and historian Merril Mattes referred to the route simply as “the Great Platte River Road” rather than associating it with any single historic trail. Overlanders reached the Platte at Fort Kearny, the first of seven forts along the Trail (more would be built in later years to repress Indian uprisings). Forts Kearny and Laramie were owned and operated by the U.S. Army. Fort Bridger was an independent fur trading post. Forts Boise and Vancouver were Hudson’s Bay Company trading posts; Fort Hall was originally an American fur trading post but soon passed into the hands of the HBC, as well. Fort Kearny had all the amenities and services of a prairie fort, including a post office and nearby Dirty Woman Ranch.
"The Oregon Trail would follow the south shore of the Platte River, crossing the South Platte at California Crossing, and then follow the North Platte and the Sweetwater all the way to South Pass. The Mormon Trail paralleled the Oregon Trail on the north side of the Platte River all the way from Fort Kearny to Fort Laramie. Emigrants on both sides of the river could see fantastic rock formations such as Courthouse and Jail Rocks, Chimney Rock, Scotts Bluff, and Independence Rock. These were important landmarks on the journey, and many of them (and other rock formations) still bear the names of travelers written in axle grease or scratched into the stone many decades ago.
"When the route was flat, the wagons would fan out rather than eat one another’s dust, and the Trail would be many wagons wide. In other places the Trail narrowed, and the rocks are rutted several feet deep from hundreds of wagons following in single file.
"At some places there were cutoffs or shortcuts where emigrants or later gold miners impatient to get to their destinations would bypass forts. Forts Bridger and Hall were both bypassed in this manner by the Sublette and Hudspeth Cutoffs. An alternate route crossing the Snake River at Three Island Crossing and going to the tree-lined Boise River became the main stem, preferred to the arid Snake River route, which the overlanders took to calling the South Alternate. Until an 1847 Indian attack, the Whitman Mission was a well-known stop on the Oregon Trail.
"In 1841 and 1842, the first two years of the Trail’s use by emigrant parties, the overland route ended at Fort Walla Walla, at the mouth of the Walla Walla River. From there, emigrants rafted their wagons down the Columbia River to the Willamette River Valley. For the next three years, the overland segment ended at The Dalles. Here, the pioneers had a choice of building rafts to carry their wagons down the Columbia or abandoning their wagons for British bateaux to Fort Vancouver and Oregon City. Beginning in 1846, the Barlow Road around Mount Hood became the preferred route for more than two-thirds of all emigrants – except in the years 1847 and 1852, when early snowfalls closed the route. Even the Barlow Road had some alternates as travelers found better routes or chanced fines by going around the toll gates.
“Ultimately, all roads led to Oregon City, the last place to camp while looking for new farms or business opportunities and the location of the land office where settlers filed their claims.”
Are you educated yet or am I going to have to get in trouble with the mods for copying and pasting the whole damn site??
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
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I suppose you are looking for the specific method that the travelers used to get their horses, oxen, and loaded wagons up and over ridges and down steep cliffs–where there was no “trail” to speak of. Conveniently, I happen to know the answer.
But, sethdallob, your second post really rubbed me the wrong way. So, I guess I will move on to less annoying threads…
I should follow Green Bean’s example and move on, but the pull of sharing history is too strong to resist.
The final stretch of the Oregon Trail was a toll road called Barlow Rd. As we learned at the Interpretive Center (and as anyone reading their website would see), the biggest obstacle of Barlow Rd. was “…Laurel Hill, a slope so steep that the emigrants had to wind ropes around tree limbs and drag hundred-foot-long tree trunks to lower their wagons safely down the incline.” Probably other pioneers used similar pulley-methods to overcome other steep slopes and mountains. As Sam Barlow himself said, “God never made a mountain but what He provided a place for man to go over or around it.”
These quotes come from http://www.endoftheoregontrail.org/road2oregon/sa21barlowrd.html
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
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Minor highjack—You guys have heard of the Donner Party, right? The settlers who got stuck trying to cross the country in the 1840s and many of them had to eat each other during the winter they were marooned?
True story: According the the Ken (or Ric?) Burns TV documentary a few years back, there were actually two families involved, the Donners and the Reeds. So it was really “The Donner Reed Party.” Not only did they eat each other, but they cleaned the dishes and helped with the housework afterward!
To go back to the OP, and to reiterate BobT’s point:
How did they get there?
They took the damn BOAT.
Before the interstates, before the paved roads meant for automobiling, the easiest way to get people and good from place to place was by WATER. Why do you think the Erie Canal was such a big deal?
Uke
A couple of thoughts for the poster of the Original Post:
First of all, quite a few immigrants to California in the period 1949-1951 came via steamship around the horn, or by taking passage to Panama, crossing the isthmus, then taking passage to San Francisco.
Second, no doubt the section of Sierra Nevada that you are thinking of (having hiked in it) isn’t where the main press of overland immigration went. However, if you have taken Interstate 80 over the Sierra Nevada from Sacramento to Reno, you have travelled right by where one of the main routes over the mountains went. Indeed, the Donner-Reed party of infamy (winter 1846-7) was trapped by snow trying to cross the headland just west of Donner Lake, where the Interstate gets through Donner Summit by climbing along the north wall of the river’s cañon, and the trains get over by climbing the south wall.
Was it difficult to get to California in the 1840’s and 50’s? Yes. Impossible? No.
I’ve driven over Donner Pass, and took some photos of Donner Lake. If I had to be stranded and eat my relatives, at least it’s a purty spot to get stuck
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
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My mom’s older sister moved out by train and later met her husband, there. My mom’s younger sister and her husband, however, took U.S. 40 to U.S. 66 and simply drove on out.
Tom~
Geez, tom, I had no idea you came from such hardy pioneer stock.
In those days, there were no McDonald’s or Starbucks on Route 66…you had no IDEA whether the next truck stop would have decent coffee!
Um, let me make a minor correction… 1849-1851.
(wondering what the hell typo-gremlin managed to infect the keyboard…)