The Meek Cutoff: Tracing the Oregon Trail's Lost Wagon Train of 1845

In 1845, a couple thousand people from Independence and St. Joseph, Missouri, left for the Oregon Territory, knowing the Oregon Trail was dangerous. Fur trapper Stephen Meek offered them a shortcut across the high desert of eastern Oregon. Meek’s memory failed, leading the travelers to weeks of dehydration and starvation through grueling landscape. They encountered dust storms, alkali lakes, and steep terrain, many becoming ill and dying in forty days.

From 2006 to 2011, author Brooks Ragan and his team of specialists and researchers traced Meek’s cutoff, finding wagon ruts, gravesites, and expedition evidence from Vale, Oregon, to the Crooked River and near Redmond, Oregon. This book presents surviving journals, maps, aerial photos, and modern-day exploration to document this Oregon Trail story.