THE TRAIL BEGINS maps, the Oregon Trail starts just west of St.
Louis, Missouri. In time, the beginning of the Trail is a bit
harder to place. first wagon train rolled onto the Trail in 1841
and emigrants eventually wore the road into a great highway, in
some places a hundred feet wide and ten feet deep. Before then,
however, many travelers had come to Oregon by a variety of
routes: early explorers and traders from the west by sea; French
Canadians and British emigrants overland from the north;
companies of traders out of Spanish California from the south;
and, following the fur trade, a small number of American
trappers and missionaries from the east. number of trails
already crisscrossed Oregon before the arrival of the first
Europeans. The earliest Oregon newcomers found that coastal
tribes, who had never before seen whites, already possessed a
few guns, knives, kettles, and even silver spoons. Native
Americans of the Oregon Plateau traded west of the Cascades and
east of the Bitteroot Mountains while coas