Paving the Way
Two missions to the west helped pave the way for the Oregon Trail. In 1804 Thomas Jefferson oraginized a secret mission inorder to try and find a better way to the Pacific Ocean. This was a very risky task becasuse if America was to go through with it they would have been illigally tredding on British soil. This would have caused major political tension between the already unstable relationships. However, Congress met and Thomas Jefferson compiled a eploration crew of two dozen men. At the head of this crew was Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Many rumors about there death ran rampid at home. There explorations was so long that many assumed that the mission had failed and what was left was two dozen men dead in a far off wilderness. However, despite these acusations Lewis and Clark made it to the Pacific Ocean thinking that they had found the best route despite the fact that it was still unnavigationable wagons.
It was not untill 1810 when the most navinigationable way was discovered. In 1810 , John Jacob Astor, the world's richest man at the time, saught to create a fur trading enterprise at the mouth of the Columbia River. So he sends Robert Stuart to lead a mision crew to the Pacific. After a rough attemp, Robert Stuart, declared that the trek was to hard to navigate through so him and his crew traveled back home. On the crews way back home they found a 20 miles wide gap in the Rocky mountains. A pas where wagons an many other aspiring pioneers could travel along.