October 6, 2006

• Fambly History

  A tidbit for family historians. My family’s historians, that is.

  Everyone knows the Oregon Trail. Among other places, it went through the Blue Mountains of northeast Oregon, and I’ve ‘blogged about those mountains before. There’s a town in the middle of the Blues called Meacham, which I’ve also ‘blogged about.

  My surname is one of a number of surnames that’s genetically and phonetically connected to the name ‘Meacham.’ We won’t argue over which spelling is the most correct.

  So. It turns out that there’s a Polk County, Oregon, in the Willamette valley. It was incorporated three years before James K. Polk signed the boundaries of Oregon into law, thus separating it from England. The county history is short on explanation of this three-year lag. It also turns out that my family is related to James K. Polk, in a way that’s never been abundantly clear to me, but which I’m assured is well supported.

  Now, if you decided to travel the Oregon Trail, there was a point where you had to make a decision. In the Snake river basin of Idaho, just about where present-day drivers have to figure out if they want to take I-86 or I-84, pioneers had to figure out if they wanted to continue along the Snake, or cut across present-day northen Nevada and California, and approach Oregon’s Willamette valley from the south.

  This alternate route is today called the Applegate Trail, after a certain family which pioneered it. The Applegate Trail didn’t find much use, because it was much longer and drier and brought more contact with the natives (who were understandably perturbed).

  And it also turns out that there’s some controversy about the name, albeit the slow-moving kind of controversy that historians engage in. It seems that there was a book published in 1947 called ‘Applegate Trail,’ which established the name which has been hard for historians to shake.

  The Applegate Trail ends in Dallas, Oregon.

  Dallas, Oregon, is in Polk County.

  And who published the book ‘Applegate Trail’ in 1947?

  A man named Walter Meacham. Thanks for asking.

  • 7:59 pm
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