An Emigrant's Journey of 1852
A local resident recounts her mother's grueling eight-month journey across the frontier by wagon train.
Mrs. C. A. Meikle has visiting her this week her mother, Mrs. Bailey, and her sister, Mrs. Foul, of Gold Beach, Ore. Mrs. Bailey, as a small girl, came west in 1852 with her parents and can relate many interesting incidents of that long trip. They were members of an emigrant train of 161 wagons that came from Chicago to Portland, coming down by Salt Lake and southern Idaho, on into Walla Walla and then down to Portland in a few days less than eight months. They had many narrow escapes from the Indians and only the vigilance of the men who stood guard at night saved their lives. As it was, they came through with only the loss of some fine horses driven off one night in an Indian raid. Mrs. Bailey says they camped a few days at the old trading post near where Walla Walla now stands, and the only things that look the same now are the sage brush and hills. She remembers particularly how glad they were to reach Portland, then a small place, and to attend church for the first time in eight months, and how homelike the old familiar song 'A Charge to Keep Have I' sounded that Sunday.
“Mrs. Bailey says they camped a few days at the old trading post near where Walla Walla now stands, and the only things that look the same now are the sage brush and hills.”
This account offers a rare, first-hand perspective on the settler experience in the Pacific Northwest, contrasting the physical landscape of 1852 with the rapidly developing cities of 1917. It serves as a reminder of the massive human migration that preceded the agricultural boom of the Kennewick region.
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