Talk:Oregon Trail

Source & mileage
This itinerary comes from a trip that I took in summer 2008 and blogged about here. The mileage-by-day reflects my own experience, but may vary for anyone else depending on their own choices of where to stay for the night or which off-trail extensions to follow. Gorilla Jones (talk) 00:34, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Wow. Amazing job.  You haven't, by any chance, read any Christopher Moore, have you?  Your sense of humor is right in line with his. Locutus (talk) 18:57, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Fantastic article, I love the way you took the reader along the trail with historic and current perspectives and humor! Karamel patti (talk) 18:18, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Omission
I omitted the National Oregon/California Trail Center in Montpelier, Idaho because we weren't aware of it on our trip and didn't stop there. The website makes it seem potentially worth visiting (though four Oregon Trail museums in seven days is rather a lot). It would fit on Day 5 of the itinerary as presently described. Gorilla Jones (talk) 22:44, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

I know this is insane, but...
Any information on doing this trip without a car? It's probably rather close to as dangerous now as it was then to take a horsecart or a cart with oxen, but maybe it is doable by bike if one is an experienced cyclist? This would imho be a "nice to have" and by no means a requirement for featuring, though. Hobbitschuster (talk) 22:27, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Answered this on the DotM page -- short version, technically possible by bike in some (i.e. Wyoming) but not all states along the trail. Wouldn't advise it personally, though. Gorilla Jones (talk) 15:35, 22 July 2017 (UTC)
 * This pair built a wagon, hitched a few mules and took to the Oregon Trail... in 2011: https://books.google.com/books?id=eutEDAAAQBAJ K7L (talk) 04:30, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Prepare/Stay safe
I'd suggest keeping the 'Prepare' and 'Stay safe' sections focused on what a traveler today needs to know. Both areas need to be given consideration by anyone setting out on the trip. In the present version of the article, a lot of material comes before the present-day considerations, and it would not be unrealistic for a traveler to assume that those sections are just historical color and set them aside for later reading. Good material, but it might serve the traveler better in the 'Understand' section instead. Gorilla Jones (talk) 15:35, 22 July 2017 (UTC)
 * They might make nice infoboxes. Powers (talk) 00:07, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm hesitant about additional infoboxes as we currently have two on this page (the Barstow Toll Road and the Susan Haile grave site).
 * I've moved all but one paragraph of historic info out of these sections into 'Understand'. Hopefully that has resolved the issue? K7L (talk) 01:50, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I agree with that. Even if we don't use infoboxes, there's some value in having the historical information near the modern info for comparison purposes. Powers (talk) 18:52, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
 * There are still lengthy historical digressions ahead of the useful contemporary info in both sections. ('Get in' seems to have lost some focus as well, and I'm puzzled by the decision to split the traveler's arrival in Oregon City apart from the listing for the End of the Oregon Trail Center in that city.) Again, I'd stress that 'Prepare' and 'Stay safe' should focus on what the traveler doing the trip today needs to know (as the itinerary template suggests). There are a good homes for historical color in the 'Understand' section and infoboxes as needed. Speaking from my experience doing the trip and then writing about it, every museum along the way has exhibits about how settlers packed for the trail and the dangers they faced along the way. Info about how to do the trip today is in shorter supply, and prospective travelers shouldn't have to go wading for it. Let them learn some things along the way. Gorilla Jones (talk) 01:03, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
 * So "every museum along the way has exhibits about how settlers packed for the trail and the dangers they faced along the way". Great, but an Oregon Trail that doesn't mention that sixty thousand people died on the Emigrant Trails would be woefully incomplete. From Guide articles, a guide article "is essentially complete... Not only would you not need to consult another guide, you'd really have no reason to want to: it's all here." Let them learn some things here. K7L (talk) 15:34, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
 * From Itinerary_article_template, 'Stay safe' describes Specifics on safety during the trip, while 'Understand' provides A more in-depth overview of the route -- its history, political and ethnic areas it passes through, cultures you're likely to meet. The deeper context that makes the trip worth making. Ergo, when we were working on the Chicago articles, we wrote about the Great Chicago Fire in Chicago instead of Chicago. Anyway, I've said my piece. Best wishes with the article. Gorilla Jones (talk) 21:17, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

GPX/GeoJSON track?
I tried using the NPS road directions to trace a path (about 3000 points) using OSM data.

This is rather approximate and its creation was time-consuming. Is there any way to download the actual co-ordinate track from the National Park Service for this route?

There's a huge collection of geographic data which are generating maps which (as U.S. federal government works) are likely free. I just can't determine how to download the actual list of (lat, long) co-ordinates. I'm also unsure if this is at a reasonable level of detail for our purposes, or whether it'll pull down 100,000 points of something huge.

I'm also wondering if there's any way for the voyager to download the track as GPX once it's here in the article? It would seem useful to be able to download this into a GPS unit and hit the road, but at the moment I'm about as lost as the Donner Party, my oxen are sick and my wagon has broken an axle somewhere on the Barlow Road - which looks to be a national forestry development road? K7L (talk) 17:10, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

A cautionbox for a featured article
I've just had to add a cautionbox to Oregon Trail in our current featured travel topic. I realise this was discussed before as a hypothetical "what happens if we feature a city and it gets hit by disaster while it's on the front page" but this is a bit more moderate as it's affecting just the final leg of a lengthy cross-country trip across three time zones. Oregon has been hit by wildfires, something which got missed among all the you have died of dysentery jokes as it happened after the article was already showcased in the FTT slot. K7L (talk) 16:49, 11 September 2017 (UTC)