1840s Guides for Travel on the Oregon Trail
Starting with the Great Migration of 1843, thousands of emigrants set out on the 2000-mile journey to Oregon, but most ventured into the unknown with little reliable information on the route to follow. The guidebooks they carried were often misleading and sometimes downright dangerous. Only a few guidebooks were published before the discovery of gold […]
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851
My new work-in-progress takes place in 1851. It is another story of emigrants traveling from the East to the Pacific Northwest on the Oregon Trail. My earlier series started in 1847 (Lead Me Home and Forever Mine), and as I do the research for my new book, I am surprised by how much changed along […]
Jumping Off: Crossing the Missouri River at Kanesville, Iowa, 1847-1851
Since moving to Seattle, I’ve been researching some of the early pioneers who settled in this area. The first settlers to establish a permanent presence in what is now Seattle were the Denny Party, who arrived in 1851. They left Illinois in April and reached Portland in late August of that year. One thing I’ve […]
Time Is Relative: I’m One Degree of Separation from 1867
Recently I was doing more research for my current work-in-progress the is set in 1867. (Yes, it’s drafted. Yes, I’m heavily into editing. And yes, I’m still researching arcane issues.) I came across a tidbit of information I hadn’t focused on before, and it got me thinking about how 1867 wasn’t that long ago, at […]
Early Railroad Bridges Across the Missouri River
Although I have a lot of editing to do on my current work-in-progress (the sixth book in my Oregon series), I am beginning to think about the next book. I’m planning for the seventh novel to be the last book in the series, but who knows? I only have the sketchiest of plots for that […]
Fort Boise
In my current work-in-progress, which takes place in 1864, some of my characters are traveling toward Fort Boise. In 1864, Fort Boise was in its second location, where the current city of Boise, Idaho, is located. In 1834, the original Fort Boise began as a fur trading post on the Snake River, near what is […]
Researching Historical Fiction: The Owyhee Expedition
As I’ve written before, I plan to set my next historical novel in Oregon in 1864. I’ve had the idea for this next book since I began writing Lead Me Home, which I first drafted in 2008 (it wasn’t published until 2015). Soon, it will be time to start writing that next book in the […]
Celilo Falls: The Columbia River As It Used To Be
As I mentioned in a recent post, the river cruise my husband and I were supposed to take in May was canceled. Periodically, I search “river cruises” and moon over the itineraries, thinking of future trips. Where might we go to escape the current boredom of life at home? So far, most cruise lines are […]
Home-Schooling with Historical Fiction
I’ve learned most of my history through historical fiction. Not all, but most of it. Even back in grade-school days, I read a lot of historical fiction—the Little House series, Caddie Woodlawn, What Katy Did, The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Anne of Green Gables. All evoked by-gone times […]
Spring Floods and the Oregon Trail
Here in the Midwest, we are experiencing serious flooding this spring. St. Joseph, Missouri, one of the prime “jumping off” points for the Oregon Trail, has had worse flooding this year than in any year in its long history. On March 22, 2019, the Missouri River reached 32.11 feet at St. Joseph, which was higher […]