Across the Great Divide: Robert Stuart and the Discovery of the Oregon Trail

Before 1813, the Rocky Mountains - the formidable 3,000 mile chain running from northwestern Alaska to New Mexico - presented a virtually impenetrable obstacle to western migration. Lewis and Clark had struggled across the high Rockies in present day Montana and Idaho some years before, but their route had been too perilous for wagon trains to follow. Then, six years after Lewis and Clark's expedition returned from the Pacific, a young fur trader named Robert Stuart made an incredible discovery. Situated in southwest Wyoming between the southern extremes of the Wind River Range and the Antelope Hills to the south, South Pass was a direct route with access to water leading from the Missouri River to the Rockies. Leading a small expedition from the mouth of the Columbia to St. Louis, Stuart and his companions were the first white men to traverse what would become the gateway to the Far West and the Oregon Trail. In the decades to come, an estimated 300,000 emigrants followed the corridor Stuart blazed on their way to the fertile farmlands of the Willamette Valley and the goldfields of California. A direct descendant of Stuart, journalist McCartney has obtained unique access to Stuart's letters and diaries from the expedition, lending depth and unparalleled insight to a story that is at once an important account of a pivotal time in American history, and a gripping, page-turning adventure.