wagon without canvas and snowy mountains in distance

Survival and Success on the Oregon Trail

What did it take to survive and succeed during a journey on the Oregon Trail? Bring your students to the Trail Center to explore the challenges, choices, and circumstances faced by the travelers, as well as the Indigenous peoples who call the region home.  

Field Trip Length and Grade Range

This two-hour school field trip is designed for students in grades 4 and 5.

How to Participate

Visit School Field Trips for program dates and a registration link.

Survival and Success on the Oregon Trail - Teacher's Guide

Program Objectives

Students will:

  • Explore the challenges, choices, and circumstances faced by travelers on the Oregon Trail and the Indigenous peoples who call the region home.  
  • Use authentic displays and sources to make inferences about life on the trail.  
  • Develop empathy and personal connections by imagining the real-life choices faced by the migrants and Indigenous peoples.
  • Participate in interactive activities and engage in dialogues, with emphasis on memorable experiences over factual learning.

Vocabulary and Concepts Covered

Focal Concepts

  • Challenges: The struggles faced by Oregon Trail travelers and the Indigenous peoples who lived around the trail
    • Examples: Overcoming difficult geography, recovering from accidents, managing limited supplies, dealing with diseases, grappling with threats to land uses and food supplies
  • Circumstances: The situation and conditions of an individual over which they have limited or no control
    • Examples: knowledge, skills, abilities, finances, gender, ethnicity, age
  • Choices: The decisions made by people living on or around the Oregon Trail that affected their chances of survival and success
    • Examples: supplies pioneers decided to bring, how Native Americans and pioneers chose to engage

Biography: A description of someone else who experienced an event, such as information about someone who traveled the Oregon Trail written by someone in the modern day

Diorama: A three-dimensional replica of a scene; at NHOTIC, dioramas represent what travelers might have been doing at different points along the Trail

Emigration: Moving away from home to settle elsewhere; ‘emigrant’ is a common term used for travelers on the Oregon Trail

Encampment: A temporary settlement made by a group of wagons, which travelers would often circle into corrals for the night

First-hand account: A record of a personal experience of an event, such as a journal entry or original map or drawing

Indigenous Americans: People who lived in the Americas before European colonization, and their descendants. Other common terms include Indigenous Peoples, Native Americans, American Indians, and Tribal Nations.

Before the Field Trip

  • Assign or read aloud the Oregon Trail Overview student reading.
  • Optional: Show this 10-minute overview video, "History of the Oregon Trail for Kids"
  • Ask the students to think about the experience of traveling the Oregon Trail. Have them consider the following questions:
    • Imagine you’re going on a trip. How will you navigate – maybe by entering the address in an online map? How will you get there – maybe by car or bus? What communication methods will you use along the way – maybe phone calls or text messages? What will you eat – maybe stop at a store or restaurant? Imagine how different this would have been for travelers on the Oregon Trail, who journeyed for at least six months in a time before phones, internet, online maps, or motorized vehicles. What might you consider while preparing for such a difficult journey?
    • Imagine you’re going to travel the Oregon Trail. How do you think being a kid would affect your experience? How do you think the experience would be different for your parents, siblings, or grandparents, and why? Who else along the trail might have a different perspective than you, and why?
  • Encourage students to think of questions to ask during the field trip.
  • Assign students to wagon teams (6 students plus one adult lead per team) that will rotate through stations throughout the exhibit area. Carefully consider social dynamics, including whether to assign students to groups for which their guardian is a chaperone. Number the teams (1, 2, 3...) for easy reference.

During the Field Trip

  • Materials needed: None! We will provide leader guides with instructions and answers for the adults, and workbooks for the students.
  • Teachers and chaperones are responsible for facilitating activities and discussions at the learning stations. This includes fostering engagement with the material and managing student behavior.
  • Example Field Trip schedule:
    • 9:30: Arrive, use bathrooms, settle in theater
    • 9:35: Theater Introduction
    • 9:50: Station Rotations (four stations, 15 minutes per station)
    • 10:50: Theater Discussion
    • 11:30: Depart or transition to teacher-led activities

After the Field Trip

  • Email us your questions and feedback. We love hearing ways that we can continue to improve our programs!
  • Post-activity suggestions:
    • Encourage students to build on their experiences with journaling. Have students revisit the page in their Traveler’s Log where they described challenges, choices, and circumstances associated with life on the trail. Have them expand on these words to create a full journal entry. Then have them write a journal entry about challenges, choices, and circumstances that they face in their modern life. Consider as a class: how are these two entries similar and different? What did people think about, prepare for, and do, then and now?
    • Expand on the map activity. Show students how to create a map of their communities, including the routes they “travel” most often (to school, home, etc.). Instead of looking at existing maps, encourage students to think about the landmarks they use to navigate and to include features on their map that would help someone else find their way. Consider as a class: how has the way we give directions changed and stayed the same? What is similar and different about the landmarks we find important versus those emigrants relied on?  

Oregon Social Sciences Standards Addressed

From Oregon Department of Education - Standards - Social Sciences

  • 4.9: Identify conflicts involving use of land, natural resources, economic interests, competition for scarce resources, different political views, boundary disputes, and cultural differences within Oregon and between different geographical areas.
  • 4.12: Explain how diverse individuals, groups (including socioeconomic differences, ethnic groups, and social groups and including individuals who are American Indian/Alaska Native/Native Hawaiian or Americans of African, Asian, Pacific Island, Chicano, Latino, or Middle Eastern descent, religious groups), and other traditionally marginalized groups, circumstances and events influenced the early growth and changes in Oregon (including, but not limited to fur trappers, traders, Lewis and Clark, pioneers and westward movement).
  • 4.17: Use primary and secondary sources to explain events in Oregon history.
  • 4.21: Analyze historical accounts related to Oregon to understand cause-and-effect.
  • 5.11: Describe how physical, human and political features influence events, movements, and adaptation to the environment.
  • 5.20: Identify and examine the roles that American Indians had in the development of the United States
  • 5.22: Summarize how different kinds of historical sources are used to explain events in the past.
  • 5.23: Use primary and secondary sources to formulate historical questions and to examine a historical account about an issue of the time.
  • 5.24: Explain why individuals and groups, including ethnic and religious groups, and traditionally marginalized groups during the same historical period differed in their perspectives of events.