In 1971, Don Rawitsch, a history major and senior at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, taught an 8th grade history class at a junior high school in Minneapolis as a student teacher.[3][4] His supervising teacher assigned him to prepare a unit on "The Western Expansion of the Mid-19th Century", and Rawitsch decided to create a board game activity about the Oregon Trail for the students. After one week of planning the lessons, he was in the process of drawing out the trail on sheets of paper on the floor of his apartment when his roommates, fellow Carleton students Bill Heinemann and Paul Dillenberger, came in. Heinemann, who along with Dillenberger was a math student and student teacher with experience in programming, discussed the project with Rawitsch, and told him that it would be well-suited to a computer program, as it could keep track of the player's progress and calculate their chances of success based on their supplies instead of a dice roll.