This is Angela Odell, and you are listening to Real Cool History for Kids, a podcast show featuring history told from a distinctly biblical worldview perspective. Welcome to an adventure.

Welcome to episode 142 of Real Cool History for Kids. This episode is for Anderson Holman, who wanted me to tell the story of the Oregon

Trail. Hi, Anderson. This one's for you. I was so excited to see Anderson's request for this story

because, well, it's kind of like getting to tell two stories

for one, because the story of the Oregon Trail is connected to a wonderful missionary story.

And who doesn't like a missionary story, right? But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let's set the historical backdrop.

And while we're at it, geographical backdrop as well. If you can grab your map of the United

States of America before we start, and I'll let you know when we're going to use it, okay?

Okay. Our time period is the mid-1800s, the 1840s, to be exact. During this time period,

America was gripped by something called Manifest Destiny.

Manifest Destiny is a term that came about in 1845, and it's the idea that God wanted Americans to spread democracy and capitalism and Christianity from sea to shining sea. Of course, not everyone who went west to

settle the vast lands of America were Christians wanting to spread Christianity. Some of them were

just, well, they wanted adventure and riches and anything that could be obtained by buying and selling

goods or finding gold.

Ever since Lewis and Clark had explored and documented the Louisiana purchase in the early 1800s,

Americans had been pushing west.

The three main trails that the settlers used to travel west were the California Trail, the Santa Fe Trail, and the Oregon Trail.

But the Oregon Trail was the most used, the most traveled.

For the most part, in the early 1800s, there were people going out there, but they were not

families looking for a new place to settle. They were merchants and traders and trappers.

They were really rough mountain men who forged paths to the west through the mountains.

These guys were really important as part of our

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