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Cleopatra Lived Closer to the Computer Age than to the Pyramids, and Other Atypical History Facts

Khalid Elhassan December 30, 2019 33 min

12. Which is Older: The Oregon Trail, or the Fax Machine?

The Oregon Trail. Encyclopedia Britannica

The roughly 2200 mile long Oregon Trail connected the Missouri River to Oregon. It began as rough tracks and trails blazed and cleared through the wilderness by fur traders, in progressive stages, between 1811 to 1840. Initially, the segments were only passable to travelers on foot or horseback.

By 1836, the trail section between Independence, Missouri, and Fort Hall, Idaho, had been cleared to accommodate wagons, and the first migrant wagon train made that journey. Thereafter, wagon trails were gradually cleared westward, until, in 1843, they reached the Willamette Valley in Oregon. From then on, the wagon route came to be known as the Oregon Trail. Is it older than the fax machine?

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.