Alta Journal is pleased to present the second installment of a five-part original series by geologist and author Ruby McConnell tracing the creation of the Applegate Trail.
In 1843, three brothers, Charles, Lindsay, and Jesse Applegate, left their farms in Missouri, following tales of abundance and dreams of prosperity to the Oregon territory, which was a disputed swath of land stretching from today’s western Montana and Wyoming to the Pacific and north from the southern borders of Oregon and Idaho into British Columbia. They joined ranks with a wagon train of approximately 100 wagons in the first wave of what would come to be a massive, yearslong migration along the Oregon Trail. That journey, and the trials of the brothers’ subsequent years in the far western frontier, would forever imprint the Applegate name on the landscape. Ruby McConnell brings the story of the Applegates and other tales of the American West to life through her extensive research of archival material and reporting in her forthcoming book, Wilderness and the American Spirit (Overcup Press, 2024).
The Applegates’ journey to the Oregon territory went downhill quickly. Unlike the close band of brothers that composed Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery, the first Americans to chart the route, the Applegates and their party had no presidential directive or noble quest to bind them to one another. Given the group’s meager wilderness experience, the high stakes, and the many unknowns, tempers frayed easily. It took just days for Peter Burnett, the promoter hired to lead the caravan, to lose his position over a botched river crossing and an inability to coalesce the group.
Without clear leadership and under pressure to cross the western mountains ahead of winter weather, the train broke into two parties. Those who were slow-moving or traveling with large herds of livestock fell behind to form their own company, called the Cow Column. They elected Jesse Applegate to lead them.
It proved a good choice. Jesse brought order and discipline to the Cow Column. Each day followed a predictable schedule, and positions in the wagon train were consistently rotated, ensuring that no one party “eat another’s dust” for too long. In his diary, Jesse describes his method of maintaining order: “All know when, at 7 O’clock, the signal to march sounds that those not ready to take their proper places in the line of march must fall into the dusty rear for the day.”
The days were long, usually beginning at 4 a.m. with a wake-up call of shots being fired, but the food was plenty (pork and flapjacks for breakfast, buffalo or other game for dinner), and at night there was music around the fire. People got along. Having followed missionary Marcus Whitman, they successfully arrived at his fort in Walla Walla near the bank of the Columbia River in October 1843. It was just weeks before the start of winter.
Fort Walla Walla was a significant milestone of the journey, a place where the dry, grassy flatlands and vast prairie finally began to give way to the ponderosa pines that signaled entry to alpine country. The final push west would lead them over the high peaks of the Cascade Mountains. Still-active volcanoes, the Cascades were an untidy row of overlapping mountains covered with dense temperate forests dominated by massive Douglas firs that blocked passage and obscured sight lines. Word was, the journey was hard going, especially with wagons. Lewis and Clark, and nearly everyone else since, had opted to run the massive Columbia River.
The train disbanded as each family chose its own path, making its way to its personal promised land and its own western stories. Some headed north to trapping country; others decided to forgo the mountains, settling in the high-desert cattle country. Some chose to find a place to overwinter, waiting for the following spring to set off for the western valleys.
Most of those who opted to take the river did so haphazardly, lashing together logs as makeshift rafts and piling them so high with provisions and possessions that they sank low into the fast-moving water. Being of some means, the Applegate brothers could afford to pay to send their animals overland while the families floated the river. They stayed near Walla Walla for several weeks to hire a river guide and construct proper boats. In St. Louis, they’d spent some time on the water, and they felt they were well-suited for the river run. Besides, most of the trip was supposed to be on smooth waters. Before they reached those smooth waters, though, they had to navigate a rocky, rapids-filled, six-mile-long portion of the river that led to an Indigenous trading post and seasonal fishing village called the Dalles.
The segment of river leading to the Dalles was notorious for its whirlpools, side channels, and waterfalls, some of which, like Celilo Falls, had fishing platforms that extended over the face of the falling water. In places, building-size blocks of basalt stuck out of the water. Many considered the stretch too dangerous to navigate and chose to walk the banks carrying their supplies and boats with them. Even Lewis and Clark had portaged portions of this river run when they’d arrived in the region.
Eager to find shelter in the valley before winter, the Applegates didn’t have time for a portage. They decided to risk the run. It was a decision that would make their first taste of the Oregon Country bitter, a flavor each of them would come to know too well.
The Applegates set off from the north side of the river on November 4. They were a group of about 60, distributed across several mackinaws—wide, flat-bottomed boats that resemble oversize canoes with sails. They were more stable and faster than rafts. It took the group several days to reach the Dalles rapids, toward which they reported traveling largely without worry.
Staid and grim-faced, the Applegate brothers were known for their evenhanded leadership and midwestern stoicism. Unlike many pioneers, they were not superstitious, but the women in the family perhaps were. Subsequent generations of Applegates have told of an incident in those first days along the river that hints at the mystical. On that occasion, family lore recounts, Jesse’s wife, Cynthia, perhaps agitated by a passing raven, prophesized an impending death in the company. The journey had been long and hard, and everyone was tired, so her warning was dismissed. The brothers had their own concerns about timing, money, and what lay ahead. The upcoming river rapids at the Dalles, for one, had them concerned, as they found themselves feeling uneasy in the hands of their guide, a local Indigenous man with whom they were barely able to communicate.
Days later, they made the run. The first boats did well, but one of the later boats was pulled into a strong current near the south shore and went down. In the boat were Alexander McClellan, a 70-year-old friend of the family they called Uncle Mac; Cynthia’s 21-year-old brother, William Parker; and four young boys (Billy Doak, a family friend; Elisha and Warren, Lindsay’s sons; and Edward, Jesse’s boy).
When the boat capsized in the whirlpool, everyone was thrown into the water. Those who were strong swimmers fared well. William made it safely to shore. Elisha swam to one of the basalt outcrops in the river, towing Billy, who stayed above the water by holding on to a tick, a kind of makeshift mattress that was little more than a sack of feathers. Uncle Mac was last seen trying to keep little Edward’s head above the water.
Uncle Mac’s body was never found. No one seems to have seen what happened to Warren.
Already safely on the shore, the rest of the Applegates could only watch. Grief hit them like a wave and they immediately sought an outlet—first turning on their guide, whose own boat had safely navigated the run. Then they lashed out at the Indigenous people gathered along the shore, who they would later claim had not attempted a rescue. Surely the river was not to blame; a loss of so much life must be someone’s fault, and these were the only people close at hand.
Lindsay first thought that the tragedy was somehow intentional. When cooler heads prevailed, it became clear that a rudder failure was to blame and that, in fact, the Indigenous people had carved warnings about the dangers of the passage into the stone cliff walls above the water. The images, which according to Applegate family descendants translated to “What belongs to the river belongs to the river,” also served as a warning to potential rescuers. In those treacherous waters, only death could follow death.
The Applegates’ failure to understand and heed the warning, and their subsequent reaction, were indicative of the troubled relations between the U.S. emigrants and the Indigenous inhabitants of the Oregon territory. Soon those tensions would collide with the federal government’s ongoing battle with colonial powers over control of the region. Political necessity and a desire to find a safer route would spur the Applegates along another western trail filled with its own dangers, tragedies, and misplaced blame. That route, which would come to bear their name, would become one of the most important trade and transportation arteries of the American West. But first they would have to find it.
PART THREE: THE ROAD HUNTERS »
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Ruby McConnell is a writer and geologist who writes about the intersection of the natural world and human experience. She is the author of the critically-acclaimed outdoor series A Woman’s Guide to the Wild and A Girl’s Guide to the Wild and its companion activity book for young adventurers, and Ground Truth: A Geological Survey of a Life, which was a finalist for the 2021 Oregon Book Awards. She lives and writes in the heart of Oregon country. You can almost always find her in the woods. She's on Twitter at @RubyGoneWild.
