Many travelers on the Oregon Trail kept journals or diaries as they traveled west. They wrote about ordinary days, exciting landmarks, bad weather, broken wagons, sickness, meals, and the people they met along the way. Those journals help us understand what the journey was really like.

The journal you are about to read is historical fiction. Our family and their story are made up, but their experiences are based on the kinds of things real travelers wrote about in journals from the Oregon Trail.

As you follow along, imagine what you might have written if you were making the journey in 1852.