Wagon Train To Commemorate Oregon Trail Anniversary

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. - Morris Carter's dreams are in the 1840s but his headaches have been strictly 20th century while preparing to lead a wagon train across the Oregon Trail to commemorate the start of the great westward migration.

There were police permits to be obtained, arrangements to be made with private landowners through six states and special feed to be bought so that the horses pulling the wagons won't leave behind the seeds of any weeds.

It's enough to make a veteran Wyoming wagon master long for the open prairie.

Today, Carter is scheduled to launch his own observance of the 150th anniversary of the Oregon Trail as he leads six Conestoga wagons out of Independence. The party aims to reach Oregon City, Ore., by Oct. 22.

Other, shorter wagon-train trips are planned along sections of the trail throughout the spring and summer. And the Official Oregon Trail Sesquicentennial Wagon Train, underwritten by the states of Idaho and Oregon, will cross those two states from June 25 to Sept. 4.

But Carter is setting out to cover the 2,000-mile trail, from western Missouri across northeastern Kansas through Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho and Oregon.

Along the way, the curious and adventurous will be invited to spend a day or more traveling with the train for a fee, either on horseback or in one of the wagons. The fees will help offset the $200,000 that Carter estimates the trip will cost.

A support crew also will make the trip in motor vehicles, hauling tents, tepees, portable toilets and other equipment - and all those permits.

Carter, 42, knows what he's getting into. Besides the tours he offers as a business, he took part in a wagon train that crossed 260 miles of Wyoming prairie and desert for the state's centennial observance in 1990.

"This is very similar," he said. "But it is huge in scope and it's taking hundreds of people in each state working very hard to make this happen."

Before hitting the trail, Carter's party camped for two days near downtown Independence at the National Frontier Trails Center, a renovated 19th century building that serves as headquarters for the Oregon-California Trails Association. Visitors are invited to tour the center's museum, which features trail lore and such artifacts as iron snowshoes for horses and oxen. The snowshoes were among the items jettisoned along the route as travelers sought to lighten the loads in their 4-by-10-foot prairie schooners.

Independence in 1843 was "a sea of tents" as approximately 1,000 wagons prepared to head west in the first wave of the great westward migration, said Bill Bullard, the center's director.

Today, Independence is a sea of traffic, and that will be the first difficulty the Carter party will face. With a police escort, the wagons will cover only a few miles the first day over major suburban Kansas City thoroughfares, camping for the night in southern Kansas City.

The trail then leads across the state line into Johnson County, Kan., before turning northwest. The party will exit Kansas near the Washington County town of Hanover, about 140 miles northwest of Kansas City.

On its arrival in Nebraska near the town of Odell, the wagon train is to be greeted by various dignitaries and join with Nebraska's official wagon train.

In dozens of ways, Bullard said, Carter's wagon train will have a far easier trip than those who made the journey in 1843.

"It was a hard, ferociously hard trip, even out in the plains," he said. "After the first few hours out of Independence, everyone realized they would rather walk to Oregon than ride to Oregon.

"These little wagons, the prairie schooners, were crammed full. You couldn't ride in them. For the most part you couldn't sleep in them. If they had someone sick, they'd throw in a feather mattress and let them sleep on top of the junk."

Carter's passengers will ride in comparative luxury.

"Our wagons are like Cadillacs," said Carter's administrative assistant on the trip, Jo Hadley. The padded seats of the big, well-sprung Conestogas carry 20 to 24 people; the covers roll up to allow a cross-breeze. Carter's four teenage daughters will drive some of the wagons, pulled by Clydesdales, Percherons and other draft horses.

But with all the bureaucracy to be negotiated, a trip across the Oregon Trail is "not for rank amateurs," said Bullard, who is glad to see Carter making the effort.

"The wagon train reminds people that we're dealing here with a kind of museum that's 2,000 miles long, and all of that 2,000 miles is important," Bullard said.