The Oregon Trail 4 – The Road to Oregon City

Jesse Wiley's The Road to Oregon City is the last leg of the Oregon Trail series, a choose-your-path adventure for 8 year olds in which every decision could get your family to Oregon, or not.

What happens

It's 1850. You're a pioneer kid who has already walked more than 1,300 miles beside an ox-drawn wagon with Ma, Pa, a little brother, a little sister and a dog called Archie. The book talks straight to you, so "you" are the hero all the way through.

The morning starts with Archie licking your face and the bugle going at five. Then Pa hands you the first big decision. Cross the dreaded Snake River twice more, or take a hot, dry route through the sand dunes?

At each big moment you choose, and the book sends you to a different page. Build a raft, or ask the Wasco people to help with their canoes? Push on through a snowstorm? Let Pa go scouting for food, or ask him to stay? Only one path gets you all the way to Oregon City. Lots of others end your journey early.

That's the fun of it. Your reader will probably go back again and again to see what they missed, and argue about the right answer (you might too).

Worth knowing before you hand it over

The endings are REAL endings and some are grim. A bad choice can mean dying of dysentery or rabies, meeting a mountain lion, or losing your feet to frostbite. On one path Pa doesn't wake up. It's all told briefly and without gore, but it is told plainly.

For a child who takes things to heart, that's worth thinking about. For one who loves history and doesn't mind a bit of danger, it brings home how hard the journey really was.

There's lots of everyday detail as well. Flapjacks and bacon for nearly every meal. Butter churned in a bucket hanging off the bumping wagon. Coffee drunk by everyone, even little Hannah, to hide the taste of bad water.

What to read next

The Oregon Trail books follow one journey in four parts, and this one assumes you've done the first three. If your reader is starting here, the journey begins with The Race to Chimney Rock, where the family is still in Independence, Missouri, getting ready for a trek of two thousand miles.