The ox-team pioneer of 1852 tries the airplane trail in 1921.
The committee of Congress in charge of the bill appropriating fifty thousand dollars to mark the trail, by this time had taken action and had made a favorable report. Such a report was held to be almost equivalent to the passage of a bill. So, all things considered, the conclusion was reached to suspend operations, ship the team home, and for the time being take a rest from the work. I had been out from home twenty-eight months, lacking but five days; hence it is small wonder that I concluded to listen to the inner longings to get back to home and home life. On the twenty-sixth of May I shipped the outfit by rail from St. Joseph to Portland, Oregon, where I arrived on the sixth day of June, 1908, and went into camp on the same grounds I had used in March, 1906, on my outward trip.
As I returned home over the Oregon Short Line I crossed the old trail in many places. This time, however, it was with Dave and Dandy quietly chewing their cud in the car, while I enjoyed all the luxuries of an overland train.
I began vividly to realize the wide expanse of country covered, as we passed first one and then another of the camping places. I was led to wonder whether or not I should have undertaken the work if I could have seen the trail stretched out, as I saw it like a panorama from the car window. I sometimes think not. All of us at times undertake things that look bigger after completion than they did in our vision of them. We go into ventures without fully counting the cost. Perhaps that was the case, to a certain extent, in this venture; the work did look larger from the car window than from the camp.
Nevertheless, I have no regrets to express or exultation to proclaim. The trail has not yet been fully or properly marked. We have made a good beginning, however, and let us hope the end will soon become an accomplished fact. Monumenting the old Oregon Trail means more than the mere preservation in memory of that great highway; it means the building up of loyalty, of patriotism, as well as the teaching of our history in a form never to be forgotten.
Words can not express my deep feeling of gratitude for the royal welcome given me by the citizens of Portland. I was privileged to attend the reunion of the two thousand pioneers who had just assembled for their annual meeting.
The drive from Portland to Seattle is also one long to be remembered; my friends and neighbors met me with kindliest welcome. On the eighteenth day of July, 1908, I drove into the city of Seattle and the long journey was ended. My dream of retracing the way over the Old Trail had come true.
