![]() ![]() One new challenge was going it alone, not as part of a wagon train. The Bucks tackled many of the same challenges faced by emigrants-broken wheels and axles, thunderstorms, forced marches to reach water, runaway mules. Regardless, the brothers sometimes got lost or sidetracked (the trail has many offshoots and optional routes, as was the case in its 19th-century heyday). ![]() Yes, in places highways and railroad tracks cover over the old trail, but it is well marked, and, Ricker writes, “Except for two bad stretches of suburban sprawl around Scottsbluff, Neb., and Boise, Idaho, most of the rest of the trail is still accessible along remote farm and ranch roads in the West.” Some original wagon ruts remain in western Nebraska and central Wyoming. But in 2011, unlike anyone in more than 100 years (since Ezra Meeker in 1910), he set out to travel the route in a covered wagon, along with his handy if eccentric brother Nick-who did most of the driving and repair work-a Jack Russell terrier named Olive Oyl and three draft mules with distinct personalities. Like many writers before him who became “rut nuts,” Rinker Buck became fascinated with the Oregon Trail and read most of the pioneer journals and old travel guides. The 2,200-mile emigrant wagon route from Missouri to Oregon remained a busy frontier highway from the 1830s until 1869 when work crews completed the first transcontinental railroad. ![]() The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey, by Rinker Buck, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2015, $28 ![]()
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