The convoy of settler wagons trundling across the Great Plains is an enduring image in American history, and the Oregon Trail to the Pacific Northwest was a key route for those early pioneers. Fur traders had followed in Lewis and Clark’s footsteps, but it took another 30 years before a missionary party led by Marcus and Narcissa Whitman brought a small group – including women and wagons – to the Willamette Valley.

It laid the foundations for the Great Migration of 1843, although it ended in disaster for Whitman and his wife when the local Cayuse people blamed him for an outbreak of measles, resulting in their murders.

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Rare historic photos that capture life in the Old West