After leaving the Snake River we had one of the worst stretches of the trying journey. From the lower crossing of the Snake River at old Fort Boise to The Dalles is approximately three hundred and fifty miles over mountains and deserts. It became a serious question with many travelers whether there would be enough provisions left to keep them from starvation and whether their teams could muster strength to take the wagons in. Many wagons were left by the wayside. Everything that could possibly be spared shared the same fate. Provisions, and provisions only, were religiously cared for. Considering the weakened condition of both man and beast, it was small wonder that some ill-advised persons should take to the river in their wagon beds, many thus going to their death.
Benj. A. Gifford
The dust got deeper every day. Going through it was like wading in water as to resistance. Often it would lie in the road fully six inches deep, so fine that a person wading through it would scarcely leave a track. And when disturbed, such clouds! No words can describe it.
Benj. A. Gifford
At length, after we had endured five long months of soul-trying travel and had covered about eighteen hundred miles, counting from the crossing of the Missouri, we dragged ourselves on to the end of the Overland Trail at The Dalles on the Columbia River. From here my wife and I, with the baby, went by boat down the river, while Oliver took the ox team on to Portland by the land way.
The Dalles is a name given to the peculiar lava rock formation that strikes across the Columbia, nearly two hundred miles from the mouth. These rocks throw the great stream into a fury of foaming rapids. An Indian legend says that the Bridge of the Gods was once near The Dalles, but that the bridge broke and fell.
On the September day in 1852 when we reached The Dalles, we found there a great crowd of travel-worn people. This assemblage was constantly changing. It was a coming-and-going congregation.
