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Oregon Trail

Suggested level: all

Description: This patch is designed to help girls understand and appreciate the history of the Oregon Trail and the pioneers that traveled it.

Patch Requirements: All girls are required to complete the three (3) starred (**) activities.  Brownie Girl Scouts need to complete a total of six activities.  Junior Girl Scouts need to complete a total of eight activities.  Cadette and Senior Girl Scouts need to complete eight activities.  If an older girl selects an activity that has a “ó” by it, both activities in the numbered item must be completed.

Activities:

1. **Participate in an activity or celebration directly related to the celebration of the Oregon Trail. Check with your community on events in your area. Champoeg Park has an annual reenactment. Look around.

2. **Trace your family tree. With your parents help trace back your family 4 generations - you, your parents, your grandparents, and you great grandparents.

   • Write a short biographical sketch about your parents’ or grandparents’ life, or make a recording with your parents or grandparents talking about their lives.

3. Build a toy that may have been played with by a pioneer child.

   • Write a paragraph about the types of toys that were available to the children in the 1880s.

4. Find out about your community.  When was it settled?  Who, if anyone, lived there before the pioneers moved into the area?

   • Write a paper recording this information.

5. Make some homemade bread and butter. Dine on a meal that people in covered wagons may have eaten (sourdough, hardtack, beef jerky, wild game, beans).

   • Develop a troop service project using skills you have learned.

6. Try your hand at a skill the early settler women may have had to know about (i.e. spinning, weaving, quilting, soap making, making candles, hand sewing, etc.).  Attend a presentation offered by a local guild in one of these areas.  Check your local newspaper for these events. These could include a quilt show, Mission Mills' annual Sheep to Shawl event in Salem or a spinning or weaving guild display (try Aurora).

7. Find out about the Native Americans that inhabited the area before the pioneers settled.  Were they nomads?  What did their homes look like?  What did they eat?  Attend a Pow Wow.

8. **Build a replica of a covered wagon the people may have traveled in.  How did they travel?  Were they able to ride?  How much stuff could they bring with them on the journey?

9. Read a book or story about pioneer life. Would you have liked to live during that time period? Write down your thoughts. Brownie Girl Scouts may wish to draw a picture of what they think it might have been like.  What things were different?  What kinds of chores were the children expected to do?

10. Visit a museum that shows how settlers traveled, lived as pioneers and established communities.

11. Take a field trip and follow part of the Oregon Trail. There are places not far from the Willamette Valley where the actual ruts from wagons are visible. A trip from Prineville to Oregon City might be an example.

12. What entertainment did the pioneers participate in both along the trail and in the established settlements?  How is it different than today's entertainment?  If possible, participate in some form of entertainment they might have enjoyed.

    • Music: What types? What instruments?

    • Drama: Melodrama. Vaudeville type?

    • Dance: Square or live dance. Waltz.

13. What kinds of work did the pioneers do before they came and after they got here?  Was it the same or different?  Can you identify what kind of work these people did?

    • Farrier

    • Copper

    • Blacksmith

    • Cobbler

    • Tin Smith

    • Haberdasher

    • Milliner

    • Tailor

    • Mercantile

    • Apothecary

    • Seamstress

    • Midwife

    • Wrangler

    • Wagon Master

    • Cow Poke

14. What might a trip to the doctor have been like?  What kinds of medicines were used?  How has medicine changed?

(c) 2003
Girl Scouts of Santiam Council a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization