The Meek Cutoff: Tracing the Oregon Trail's Lost Wagon Train of 1845 by Brooks Geer Ragen

 OHQ vol. 115, no. 1 find attractive, as they will Lichatowich’s suggestion that one of the principal shortcomings of salmon managers is their lack of attention to the lessons of the history of the numerous salmon-recovery failures. Learning from past mistakes might be the first step in a viable salmon recovery plan. Michael C. Blumm Lewis & Clark Law School The Meek Cutoff: Tracing the Oregon Trail’s Lost Wagon Train of 1845 by Brooks Geer Ragen University of Washington Press, Seattle and London, 2013. Illustrations, photographs, maps, bibliography, index. 156 pages. $40.00 cloth. The Meek Cutoff joins earlier well respected books, such as The Terrible Trail: The Meek Cutoff, 1845 (1966) and The Brazen Overlanders of 1845 (1976),on the subject of the ill-fated 1845 emigrant party that accepted the offer of trapper Stephen Meek to guide them on a shortcut to The Dalles — a bypass for the difficult Blue Mountain and Columbia River segment of the Oregon Trail. Instead of attempting to rehash or further elaborate on material covered in these previous works, this investigation serves as more of an on-the-ground field verification of possible locations referenced in the emigrants’ original diary entries.In the process,the author considers and weighs past and current interpretations on the trail against varied historic documentation. Author and participant Brooks Geer Ragen documents the investigation of a twelve member interdisciplinary crew as they retrace the historic route. The product of this collaboration is a coffee-table-size book that includes text discussions with accompanying photographs, and its most notable feature, full-page shaded relief maps showing routes and locations of interests. For serious scholars, the investigation provides a much-needed documentation of the physical trail as well as an assessment of past and current thinking on the subject. Such an attractive product probably also appeals to a wider audience that might not have had an interest in pursuing previous more comprehensive textual accounts. This reader appreciates the inclusion of the experience and related cautionary note involving the excitement of finding historic pottery shards (only to discover a “Japan” marking), as well as the team’s discovery of a number of artifacts likely associated with the historic event.Ragen responsibly notes how discovered artifacts are fully documented but always left in place. Through its field-based methodology, the team is able to dismiss some previous speculation regarding the route.When comparing possibletheoriesregardingtherouteof diaristJohn Herren around Westfall Butte, for example, the team demonstrates the impractical terrain encountered along theorized routes. The final leg of the historic journey,following the Deschutes River north to the Columbia River, was not documented. The author’s explanation for its absence, as related in the preface:“When they reached the Crooked and Deschutes Rivers, they had some idea of their location and they had water for people and animals”(p.x).True,but this segment involved deaths, as acknowledged by the author, with associated burials, the escape of Meek and his wife across Sherars Falls, the rescue of emigrants and their crossing of the Deschutes River in wagons, and their arrival at the The Dalles.These events are associated with specific  Reviews geographic locations with possible historic features and are worthy of investigation to readers who still wish to commemorate this final segment.This work is a valuable contribution toward the documentation of the historic Meek Cutoff route, as well as a summation of much past research, and it suffers only by not continuing its investigation to the journey’s undisputed end. Lindon Hylton Madras, Oregon Emigrants on the Overland Trail: The Wagon Trains of 1848 by Michael E. LaSalle Truman State University Press, Kirksville, Missouri, 2011. Photographs, maps, index. 516 pages. $40.00. Although westward emigration history may be viewed as well-traveled ground, Michael LaSalle provides a fresh perspective with Emigrants on the OverlandTrail.LaSalle’s own journey began with the gift of a family heirloom: a letter written by his great-great-great uncle, Thomas Corcoran,who was born in Ireland in 1825, grew up in Quebec, came to Missouri as a teenager, and traveled west in 1848. During that year,only eighteen wagons trains carrying just 1,700 emigrants traveled from...

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