How many people died on the Oregon Trail?
Oregon Trail
Miscellaneous deaths included deaths by childbirth, falling trees, flash floods, homicides, kicks by animals, lightning strikes, snake bites, and stampedes. According to an evaluation by John Unruh,[101] a 4percent death rate or 16,000 out of 400,000 total pioneers on all trails may have died on the trail.
Oregon Trail
In January 1848, James Marshall found gold in the Sierra Nevada portion of the American River, sparking the California Gold Rush.[31] It is estimated that about two-thirds of the male population in Oregon went to California in 1848 to cash in on the opportunity. To get there, they helped build the Lassen Branch of the Applegate-Lassen Trail by cutting a wagon road through extensive forests. Many returned with significant gold which helped jump-start the Oregon economy. Over the next decade, gold seekers from the Midwestern United States and East Coast of the United States dramatically increased traffic on the Oregon and California Trails. The "forty-niners" often chose speed over safety and opted to use shortcuts such as the Sublette-Greenwood Cutoff in Wyoming which reduced travel time by almost seven days but spanned nearly 45 miles (72km) of desert without water, grass, or fuel for fires.[32] 1849 was the first year of large scale cholera epidemics in the United States, and thousands are thought to have died along the trail on their way to California—most buried in unmarked graves in Kansas and Nebraska. The "adjusted"[33] 1850 U.S. Census of California showed this rush was overwhelmingly male with about 112,000 males to 8,000 females (with about 5,500 women over age 15).[34] Women were significantly underrepresented in the California Gold Rush, and sex ratios did not reach essential equality in California (and other western states) until about 1950. The relative scarcity of women gave them many opportunities to do many more things that were not "normally" considered "women's work" of this era. After 1849, the California Gold Rush continued for several years as the miners continued to find about $50,000,000 worth of gold per year at $21 per ounce.[35] Once California was established as a prosperous state, many thousands more emigrated there each year for the opportunities.