A Journey Along The Oregon Trail! Book #20

A Journey Along The Oregon Trail! © 2015 by Raymond Cook is a 295 page (FICTION) story about Frank and Lisa Mead, a young couple in their twenties who lived in Columbia, Missouri in 1898. Frank was only twenty three years old when his father was kicked in the head by a horse in the livery stable and died. Frank tried to make a go of running his father’s livery stable but saw family after family buying a covered wagon to go out west.

160 acres of good land was for the taking in California, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and even Oregon. But to get there meant leaving everything they owned behind as well as their friends and trek across the plains risking their very lives for the chance to carve themselves a new life out of the wilderness. Not only was a good quality covered wagon needed but also strong oxen or horses to pull a covered wagon weighing nearly 1,200 pounds plus 700 pounds of provisions.

The following year, Frank sat down with his wife and talked about selling the livery stable and their farm and heading for Independence, Missouri. Once there they planned to join a wagon train headed for Colorado to start a new life. But the couple will risk death itself long before they reach Independence. The couple joins a wagon train of forty families destined for Denver, Colorado but less than half will arrive there safely.

Along the way, the wagon train comes across five covered wagons that were attacked by Indians and only one survivor is found alive, a tiny baby girl hidden in a cedar hope chest by its mother. They will also face discouragement, wildfires, dangerous river crossings, rattlesnakes, lost children, drought, a tornado, dust storms and treacherous mountains to get over. This is a story about a journey along The Oregon Trail.