Cholera outbreaks and pandemics
That year, cholera was transmitted along the California, Mormon and Oregon Trails as 6,000 to 12,000 are believed to have died on their way to the California Gold Rush, Utah and Oregon in the cholera years of 1849–1855. It is believed more than 150,000 Americans died during the two pandemics between 1832 and 1849.
Ezra Meeker
Meeker found that the final stretch between Fort Boise (now Boise, Idaho) and The Dalles was the most difficult. The section is filled with mountains and deserts, and there was little chance of supplementing stores. Those who entered this segment with exhausted teams or minimal supplies often died along it. Others shed baggage brought across half a continent, saving only provisions. Parties who feared this part of the journey sometimes tried to float down the Snake and Columbia Rivers; many were wrecked in the rapids and died. At The Dalles, where river passage was available to Portland, the Meeker party found a motley crowd of emigrants. With the money earned at the ferry, they booked passage downriver. Oliver Meeker brought the livestock ahead overland, and met Ezra and his family on their arrival in Portland on October 1, 1852, where they slept inside a house for the first time since leaving Iowa. Ezra Meeker had lost and possessed $2.75 in cash. All of the party survived, although Jacob Davenport, one of Oliver Meeker's friends from Indiana, became ill on the final part of the trip and died some weeks after reaching Portland. All but one of the livestock completed the trip—a cow was lost while crossing the Missouri River. Ezra Meeker considered his journey over the Oregon Trail to have been the making of him as a man.