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- [00:02]
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- [00:39]
Don Wildman
All right, let's see here. John has dysentery. Mary's broken her arm. Emma, well, she drowned in a river with two horses. And William died from a rattler's bite. Oh, and my word, the trail leader is suffering from exhaustion. You know what? I'm hitting reset. In the Oregon Trail, the famous video game started back in the 1970s and 8. The typical list of agonizing mishaps, dreadful sicknesses and fatal encounters could be pretty extreme, but apparently did not hold a candle to what the actual 400,000 or so American pioneers back in the day would have faced on the real Oregon Trail. All 2,000 miserable miles of it. They say 1 in 10 travelers died out there. One wonders why so many went. All right, let's try this again. Last time we were a farmer. This time, carpenter. Maybe that'll improve my chances. Purchase oxen, food, clothing, bullets and spare parts from Matt's general store. Check the weather wagon Trail's health food supply. And we are off on our pixelated appointment with destiny. All from the comfort of our own low res computer screen. Yeehaw. Hello and welcome to a new episode of American History Hit. I'm Don Wildman. Welcome. You know, I'm a little at sea today as to, you know, how to proceed at first, not because of the subject at hand. Fascinating stuff. America's westward expansion in the mid 19th century vis a vis the Oregon Trail. The notion of manifest destiny, seat shining, sea, all that. And we'll talk about it in a few moments. But I'm equally fascinated by the specific work of my guest today. You'll soon understand it's important that we address all this up front. It is an established fact that what we might call history media, the practice of discussing historical events and. And all their greater implications, has been effectively overtaken, appropriated, devoured even by online sources, the websites, the YouTube channels. And my guest today is one of the more successful practitioners of this trade. Not to mention entertaining and engaging. He is a former history teacher, grades 7 through 12. Spent years in the classroom. Now he's a video producer, podcaster. His YouTube channels, Mr. Beat and the Beat Goes on, have gathered more than 650,000 subscribers with more than 100 million views and still counting Breathless for someone like Me. He is a musician with a band called Electric Needle Room, best known for his songs about American presidents. The man's a history media legend. Matt Beat.
- [03:36]
Matt Beat
Mr.
- [03:37]
Don Wildman
Beat, I'm so glad to meet you. Welcome to American history hit.
- [03:40]
Matt Beat
Yeah, thanks for having me. And thanks for saying the kind words.
- [03:45]
Don Wildman
You know, I spent years as a guy on TV history. They didn't even have a name for me, you know, I was such a. An amateur at this business. I was a history explorer, they called me when I was on Travel Channel. Absolutely meant nothing, but looked really good on paper. And we spent years. I started pretty much in the 90s, I guess, late 90s, but certainly through the aughts. It was a known fact that we were quickly being encroached upon by a much more effective medium for talking about history, which was the online sources. You know, it was just this world of people who were not only very good at what they were talking about and understood the subject matter in depth, coming from academic backgrounds or whatever, but they also had the ability to gather a very specific audience who was passionate about the same kind of detail and wanted to really hear about this stuff. And we in the television world began to realize that our days were numbered because you can't do that for television. You gotta stay visual, you gotta stay active, you gotta make yourself into a protagonist. When did it occur to you that you were heading in this direction as you were teaching history?
- [04:55]
Matt Beat
I started out in journalism, actually, believe it or not, my first degree was in journalism. I got that in 2004. And so I was in TV and radio for a short while. But I quickly realized I didn't want to do that. And so flash forward about five years. I went back to school to become a teacher, got an education degree. And when I started student teaching, I realized that some of this stuff was legitimately boring, that they had to learn, you know. And specifically the topic that I wanted to try to make more engaging for eighth graders was the Compromise of 1850. And so I made a silly video with my brother. I forced my wife to film me, and we put it on a YouTube, a new YouTube channel. But the video was literally private. It was never meant to be shown to the public and only my students in the classroom. But they Got a kick out of it. And I got to use my video skills because I learned some of that getting my journalism degree. And then years later, I started taking it more seriously when I realized there were a lot of teachers that were playing my videos in their classrooms. And I love making videos. I love history. I also got a degree in history, a master's in history. So I specialize on American political history. But I mean, I'll tackle any of it. And my mantra is just trick the audience into learning.
- [06:23]
Don Wildman
So I was surprised when I got the word that we were doing this Oregon Trail story because I just come back myself from doing a film for history hit on Fort Laramie. I was out in Wyoming just a couple weeks ago and wandering around that fort and telling the story myself of that particular place and the Oregon Trail that led to it and away from it. It was a really interesting experience. So imagine my surprise when I found out that I'd be getting to talk to you about. About the same subject matter. But, you know, it's one of those things that if you see a podcast about the Oregon Trail, you might kind of go, oh, old fashioned history, you know, westward expansion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I learned about Mr. Beat doing it, and it became an entirely different kind of aesthetic. So I was psyched about this. I had never seen your channel. I'd never known you existed until this. So I am very grateful. The Oregon Trail was one of your films. When did you do this project?
- [07:22]
Matt Beat
We went in early August. The first two weeks of August? Yeah.
- [07:26]
Don Wildman
Oh, it was recent. Then it was this.
- [07:28]
Matt Beat
We're.
- [07:28]
Don Wildman
We're talking in 2022. So this is October. The idea that you came up with was to tour the entire Oregon Trail, which. The Oregon Trail really goes right near where you live in Kansas. And so you elected to do it in a Tesla. So it was touring the Oregon Trail in a Tesla with your wife and two children. A very, very long journey. Even in a modern day vehicle, you know, it's all relative. You know, in. In 1836 it was six months, but today you can do it in a week. But even that's pushing it. I've driven across this country and it's insanely big. So it's a real challenge to head out. Tell me how you approached this project and how did you convince your wife to do it?
- [08:14]
Matt Beat
Yeah, so first of all, we wanted to drive the whole Oregon Trail. It's actually called the Oregon Trail Auto Tour. You can just. It follows along highways. Mostly we wanted to do the whole thing in seven days. Because, you know, you don't want to take too much time off work and all that. But I was like, you know, let's make it an adventure. And so maybe also it will be kind of fun to, for the first time in my life, drive an electric vehicle, specifically a Tesla. But, yeah, I live near the beginning of the trail. The trail begins in Independence, Missouri. That's where most people lift on the trail, although some started off on Council Bluffs to the north or St. Joseph to the north. And I live in Lawrence, which is just west of Kansas City. Independence is a suburb of Kansas City. A street in Lawrence actually follows the Oregon Trail. Exactly. And I lived near there, and I was like, you know what? I'm right here towards the beginning of the trail. Why not just do this? And, yeah, 2,000 miles in seven days. We actually didn't make it in seven days. It took eight days because of complications mostly related to finding a charging station. That was the biggest challenge, especially in places like Wyoming. Wyoming was we had to go off the trail multiple times, and it added hours to the trip just to charge the vehicle. So it did make it an adventure.
- [09:36]
Don Wildman
The Oregon Trail. Let's talk about the very beginning of this. Historically speaking, how did this trail even begin?
- [09:44]
Matt Beat
It had origins in Native American footpaths, like they would. And this was kind of by accident. They just kind of, you know, a lot of the trails, old trails, would follow rivers or follow passes between mountains, you know. And later we have the fur trappers. Most Americans today know them as the mountain men. That's a more mysterious way to call them. But they were these traders, essentially, who went out to mostly trap fur to make a lot of money. And they also interacted with Native Americans, and they established good relations with them for the most part. And so they had set up all these trails. They were the ones who created the trails. It wasn't until 1836, I believe, that you saw wagons actually go on the Oregon Trail. In the coming years, it would be like more and more wagons that kind of made the now. It was never like a road like we think of today. In my video, I used the analogy of a rope. Like, you have actually multiple trails, kind of like zigzagging over each other. And then later, of course, you had the Mormon Trail that overlapped it as well. Part of the trail goes off to California, which we call that the California Trail. All of these trails together. It's actually people that are on the trail to settle in the West. We call them the Immigrant Trail collectively, because these trails were different from previous trails because if you went on this trail, you're probably just going to go on it once. You're never going to go on it ever again because it's such a long distance. Like you said, it could take up to six months on this journey.
- [11:18]
Don Wildman
It's one thing to create a trail and invite people or even sell the idea of people getting on this trail, but there has to be something they get out of it. What had happened in America at this time to make this worthwhile for the average, you know, Missourian, or never mind New Jersey, and to decide that, that they should make this insane journey with their families, with their animals, with their older belongings, leave the past behind and. And head to a very uncertain future. What was it that made that worthwhile?
- [11:47]
Matt Beat
Well, the very earliest people who traveled on the Oregon Trail specifically were missionaries. This was after the fur trade started to die down. So you had, like Narcissa and Marcus Whitman, that was the first notable migrant wagon train that went out there and they started a mission. They actually ended up getting killed by Native Americans. So there wasn't a happy ending for them. But soon after that, Oregon Territory became in the possession of the United States. And after that, governments particularly, well, the federal government, along with the local government and Oregon Territory, they're like, hey, this is a ways away from the rest of the country. How are we going to get people out here? I know, let's give them free land. And boy, did they give them free land. We're talking 320 acres per person. So a couple like the husband and wife get double that. 640 acres of free, fertile land in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. And then you combine that with the discovery of gold in California a couple years later, that leads to tens of thousands of more immigrants heading west on the Oregon Trail, because again, it overlapped the California Trail for most of the way.
- [13:02]
Don Wildman
So, yeah, money, money and land, the old fashioned way. I'm fascinated by this aspect of history that it's one thing to sort of broad stroke the idea of cultural change, of westward expansion, all these big highfalutin terms, but it comes down to, you know, normal people deciding to uproot. And I guess it's speculation to imagine this, but I can see someone checking the newspaper. They've come off a bad harvest season. Whatever, you know, prompts the idea of uprooting oneself from civilization. You know, it's just incredible to imagine this time, you know, that really the United States was the, the first third of it, you know, the eastern Seaboard and inwards towards Illinois. But at that point it becomes the real frontier. And all everybody thinks about in terms of these areas is danger, you know, real mortal threat. And so to decide to cross it, you know, with a couple animals pulling you in a wagon, is really out there as far as a life choice to make. But I guess it was a combination of not leaving that much behind. It had to have been pretty miserable. Plus this incredible enticement of money and wealth. It's a time, it's a rising middle class in America. Slowly but surely this idea that I can get mine is a brand new idea in the world. There's, you know, prior to this, you were sort of permanently peasantry. Now this notion of America promising the great benefits of this land to pretty much anybody who wants it, as long as you're willing to make the journey is there. This is the big turning point in this American dream.
- [14:43]
Matt Beat
Lewis and Clark were basically like Neil Armstrong going to the moon. They were exploring. And then think of the people who settled in Oregon first on the Oregon Trail as the people maybe in a few decades who are the first colonizers of the moon. Because the journey to get there is hard and difficult. But then to reference what you were saying also about what they were leaving behind. Yeah, most of them were in poverty behind. I mean, although I will say a lot of you had to have a lot of money to even have a, to join a wagon train to begin with. And so I think a lot of them realized it was a good opportunity to make a lot more money, really. But yeah, 1 in 10 people died on the way.
- [15:26]
Don Wildman
We could go to the, to the end of this show where I hope we land with this conversation, because I think the modern day version of this is exactly Central America coming up to America. You know, this is the same. You can make the analogy exactly how was it organized? How was the actual trip organized? Was it a must have been a seasonal situation, right?
- [15:45]
Matt Beat
Definitely. Almost always they left in either March, April or May because you wanted to get to Oregon before the first freeze, the first snowfall in the fall especially. You don't want to be trapped in the mountains and going to California. Infamously, most people are aware of the story of the Donner Party. They left a little bit too late and they got trapped in the Sierra Nevada in the winter. So they usually went with large groups of people, although this was, you know, sometimes you had smaller groups that. But even if you went with like just, even if you were just in one wagon by the mid-1840s, you'd come across other people. And by that time, there were established forts, too, to help you along the way, which. That was the critical piece there, Those forts.
- [16:31]
Don Wildman
I always imagined it as kind of. There were guides. I think of it as sort of an industry unto itself. I would think of this as being a chance to make money, even, you know, taking these people across.
- [16:42]
Matt Beat
Definitely there were.
- [16:44]
Don Wildman
Didn't John Wayne do this for a living? I think he did.
- [16:47]
Matt Beat
I don't know about that. But you did have a lot of Native American guides at rivers crossings to help you across. You had. Not even just at river crossings sometimes, if the terrain was tough, you know. And then you had people that. Like the Barlow Road, which makes up the last stretch of the Oregon Trail before the Barlow Road was built, before he built that, you literally had to, like, turn your wagon into a float from the Dalles all the way down the Columbia river to the Willamette Valley. So you make it this far, you make it 1800 miles, you have 200 miles to go. And like, nah, there's just mountains here. The only way to get around the mountains is you have to just float down this river. Good luck. And this is like. I don't know if you've been to the Columbia river, but the Columbia river is intense, man. It is. It's huge in this big gorge. Whitewater. Yeah, It's. So, yeah, it's lots of opportunity to make. To make money, to help these folks. For sure.
- [17:44]
Don Wildman
You're kind of expressing it in a sort of piecemeal fashion, which makes sense. You'd end up with sort of one stretch of. This place had been well mapped out, and the trail was really clear, and there were ferries that were there. And then you'd go through a patch that was no man's land, you know, nothing going out there. And. And maybe they. I imagine a lot of them got lost, for that matter. I mean, there must have been tremendous amounts of. I mean, please. You get lost in an ev today, you know, with signs pointing the way, never mind in a wagon train. But what about the long wagon trains? I mean, that's the sort of cliche idea of it. In my mind, the stereotypical idea is that stagecoach notion that there were just dozens and dozens of these wagons going together.
- [18:24]
Matt Beat
It was true to a certain extent. But, I mean, a lot of times these wagon trains would get separated, and a lot of people did die. Still, like, most of the people that died along the trail died of disease. There's the kind of meme at this point which references the video game, the computer Game, which I reference a lot in my video. You have died of dysentery. That was a common way that people died. And so they just got buried along the trail and they moved on. Everyone moved on. They kind of expected at least probably 5% of your wagon trains not going to make it. And that was just something they accepted. And most of the time, the trail followed a reliable water source. However, there were certain portions where they broke away from a river. And just to kind of make it more of an adventure, in my video, we did the same. Like where there's a break in Wyoming between the North Platte river and the Sweetwater river, and it's a few miles, it's about 50 miles, actually. They had to do it by foot, of course. It usually took them at least two days, but there was nothing between those rivers. Nothing. And we drove that on dirt roads that follow the actual Oregon Trail. You can still do it today. And in my documentary, you can see, like, how isolated we were. Like, we passed one other human being during that stretch of 50 miles, and that was a rancher. And he was just like, what are you guys doing out here? And there were lots of cows that were blocking the actual road. But that's definitely, I think, the closest we got to actually kind of experiencing what the pioneers went through when they went on the Oregon trail in the 1840s.
- [20:04]
Don Wildman
It's a strong visual. I mean, you shoot a lot of your video with. With a drone, and you get a sense of the expanse. That same feeling you have when you're flying across the country. I'm telling you, I've flown this country so many times. It never ceases to amaze me, the expanse of this nation. When you get past Missouri. I mean, it's just insane how big the place is, even from 36,000ft, never mind, you know, from behind the six oxen that are pulling your wagon. It's hard to imagine how, psychologically someone could even bear the tedium, never mind the danger and threat that they were facing. How much of that threat or how much of a factor were Native American tribes in this experience?
- [20:46]
Matt Beat
Often they were more helpful than hurting, although. Yeah, I mean, the Shoshone in particular, treaties were broken that took away their land where the Oregon Trail actually went through. And so some of them resisted. There's actually a spot along the Snake river called Massacre Rocks, which became infamous after a band of Shoshone murdered pioneers on the Oregon Trail. But, yeah, I mean, we also don't get that perspective much. Like the fact that this trail, like, Made it so that hundreds of thousands of new people now were on the lands that Native American groups had been on for really tens of thousands of years at that point, like just imagining, like if your entire country was completely overrun and you could do nothing about it, that's essentially what happened.
- [21:33]
Don Wildman
One factoid I picked up in my shooting out at Fort Laramie was a big surprise to me. The impression one gets, and you make this point in your video of the wagon trail ruts that have been that were dug so deeply in many places that they still remain today. You can still see a lot of these. The literal trail of the tracks of those wagon wheels in the landscape today.
- [21:58]
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- [22:31]
Don Wildman
There were also places where the wagon trends had widened. The track had widened so, so wide that it had affected the migration of buffalo. It divided the land up, you know, the ecosystem up, because you're not only, you know, driving your wagons, the oxen are, you know, relieving themselves, the humans are relieving. There's just all kinds of detritus being left behind at the campsites that they stay in. I mean, human beings leave evidence of themselves. So if you multiply that by hundreds of thousands of people over decades, that is a profound effect on the land itself. Never mind, you know, the real estate that you're taking up. It's an impact that at least I was not aware of when I was explained to by the ranger who told me this.
- [23:20]
Matt Beat
Did you get a chance to go to the Guernsey ruts per chance, which is not that far from Fort Laramie?
- [23:25]
Don Wildman
I did not. But describe these for people that don't know what that means.
- [23:29]
Matt Beat
Yeah, that was the most dramatic part of the entire trail, in my opinion. The Guernsey ruts, it's a portion that has essentially turned into a monument because there was one specific area near present day Guernsey, Wyoming, where the wagons all follow the exact same trail so much over this kind of softer clay that they over time dug this deep trench into this rock, essentially. So today you can go there and it's up to 4, 5, 6ft deep of wagon ruts. Like, people don't really even believe it when I say it. Like you have to see it to believe it. But the wagons followed the exact same trail so much that they literally dug into a mountain. And if you can only see one spot along the trail, I always say that's the spot to go to. It's quite dramatic.
- [24:23]
Don Wildman
I remember that moment from the documentary. Here's a clip.
- [24:25]
Matt Beat
So we've got some more names here carved, and these are actually legit from the 1840s or 1850s. Pretty cool. But, yeah, I'm standing in the Guernsey ruts, which are the most famous ruts along the Oregon Trail. And you might be thinking, like, Mr. B, why are these so deep? This is. Well, wagons had to cross here since it was so difficult to get through this area. At some spots, the track is worn down as deep as six feet, making these the most dramatic ruts along the entire length of the Oregon. California Trail. Years and years of thousands of wagons going over the exact same route made it so that this basically is an unintentional monument.
- [25:11]
Don Wildman
Immediately, it speaks to the amount of traffic that went over those places. But it's also often the case that you see how determined people had to be to make it all the way across. I mean, when I was young, this was kind of the Given that we talked about. Sea to shining sea was just the sort of shrug and idea of America that made sense to everybody, or at least, you know, those who believed in that particular story. The pioneer story was sold in every movie and TV show that I watched when I was a kid. It was just the way things were. It was sort of the common tale. It has changed, of course, with time. Understanding the effect that it had on this whole phenomenon, had on Native American tribes especially, but also the landscape, et cetera, et cetera. The settlement of this country, you know, has many aspects of it that can be seen as controversial, but you can't take away the fact that this pioneering crowd that decides to uproot and move westward really is a fundamental fact, sociologically, emotionally, politically, of what made America America. The sense that a better life is elsewhere and you can go get it, was really what this country was based on and still is. It's fascinating how the pioneer story still imbues the story of America in a different version.
- [26:24]
Matt Beat
Yeah, I would say learning about the Oregon Trail is one of the quickest ways to learn about all of American history, because you get a little bit of everything in terms of the culture. I mean, so many that were on the trail were immigrants. Either they were first generation or second generation. And so they kind of embodied that spirit that really shaped our culture in terms of. Yeah, Individualism, but also like kind of grit and determination to kind of make your own way, gain your own power. Because back in Europe and other parts of the world where these immigrants came from, you often were born into wealth or you weren't in the United States. It was kind of a new thing, especially in the 1800s where like, hey, I was born poor, but I don't have to die poor. And the Oregon Trail definitely embodies that.
- [27:16]
Don Wildman
How much did the military play a role in this? We've spoken of forts being structured there. How did that work and function in this trail?
- [27:23]
Matt Beat
A lot of the forts were first started by fur traders, mountain men, just like the ones who started the trails. So like Laramie where you went, Laramie was actually a French fur trader. And then you had Bridger, the famous mountain man, Jim Bridger. You had Fort Boise. They say it Boise, not Boise, by the way, but yeah, then the military came in after them and then that's when you got forts like Fort Kearney. But generally speaking, the military presence on the trail, that's when things really picked up. Because without the security of the military along the trails, most pioneers wouldn't even think about trying to make the journey. Because it's nice to have some kind of safety net along the way. That's what those provided.
- [28:10]
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- [28:42]
Don Wildman
Yeah, you can still feel that. I mean, we really haven't sketched this yet. I want to make this clear. This 2000 mile trail goes from Missouri Independence, Missouri, near the Mississippi river there, all the way up sort of in a diagonal to the northwest. Through which states? Take me through them.
- [29:01]
Matt Beat
It's.
- [29:01]
Don Wildman
Yeah, Missouri to Kansas to Nebraska to Idaho to Oregon. Right, that's it.
- [29:07]
Matt Beat
Yeah. It starts at the Missouri river, which is. If you think of Kansas like the. It would be a perfect rectangle if it weren't for the little corner. That's a river and that's, that's the Missouri River. So that's where it starts through northeastern Kansas, through most of Nebraska, all of Wyoming, into a little sliver of Utah, through The Snake River Valley of Idaho, and then finally northeast and northern Oregon.
- [29:34]
Don Wildman
Much of this is desolation. I mean, really. And you show that in your film, mostly with the drone. You get a sense of how would they even know where the trail is, except for the two ruts in front of them? But there are certain famous spots along the way, you know, big sites. I was struck by Courthouse and Jail Rocks. That's one of the first ones you see, right?
- [29:55]
Matt Beat
Yeah. Because a lot of the landscape is kind of boring and desolate, like you said. When you did have something that was different, like Courthouse and Jail Rocks, and then you had Scott's Bluff, and then you had Independence Rock, and Chimney Rock is the most famous. That's the one that's featured prominently in the computer game. People just were excited to see something different, especially in Nebraska, where it was all just kind of no trees, relatively flat. And then also, like, I think it's important to bring up that when you're experiencing this desolation for about 1800 miles until you get essentially to the Dalles in Oregon. And then all of a sudden, you get into the Cascades, the beautiful mountain range that features Mount Hood, and you just see this lush forest. And then you get into the Willamette Valley. And it really did feel like for these pioneers, like they were entering paradise, like, because they had traveled so far and they'd finally made it, and all of a sudden think, everything's green again, and the fertile land and everything's going to be okay. How. I mean, this is also parallels to today, because much of the American West, I don't know why people live there, honestly, between wildfires and drought. I mean, holy crap. And it's amazing that we have cities like Denver and Phoenix and Tucson and Salt Lake City. Like, how are people doing this?
- [31:19]
Don Wildman
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that sort of gobsmackness is part of the American, you know, phenomenon, really. Like, how did this even happen, you know, except through, you know, extreme determination, sometimes cruelty, certainly just sort of muscling your way across a country is very much why this country is what it is today. I travel a lot. I see a lot of the world. I understand cultures, especially in Europe, which sort of comes more naturally to a Eurocentric person like myself. How everything from politics to class is set in stone there. Not anymore, of course, but it certainly was at this time. And suddenly you have a nation where you can throw that all to the wind and start over and start fresh. It still hangs on as an ideal, a psychological hope that is part of this country. And it will continue to refresh itself, which is also very interesting. Despite the fact that we have completely settled this contin. You can get a 711 anywhere you go. Now all of that is done. There's still under the skin of this country that pioneering spirit. And it wasn't only because of those pioneers and their immediate experience. It was through the media of the day. You know, that story was retold over and over again to the populations back east. And I guess maybe through cultural osmosis or something, that that feeling about America got spread and that informed the idea of manifest Destiny. Where does that fall in the story of the Oregon Trail? That notion of we belong as a nation from sea to shining sea?
- [32:57]
Matt Beat
Without manifest Destiny, you wouldn't have the Oregon Trail because there was already that prominent belief. I mean, that's how presidents got elected, like James Polk got elected before the Oregon Trail really became a popular thing. But based on, hey, we're sea to shining sea, and we are determined to make it that way because, you know what, our values are superior, let's face it, because our values are sticking up for the common person and democracy and, you know, stuff like that. So when you got those behind you, you are determined. And that's, I think, the reason why these trails were so easily made, because you had that on top of, like, the political will and cultural will on top of it.
- [33:41]
Don Wildman
Right. It was also just the necessity of bringing a population out west if you're going to claim a territory and say it's yours. And as far as the Northwest was concerned, that required taking it back from the British in a negotiated way. If you're going to claim these lands, you got to have people who live there.
- [33:59]
Matt Beat
Yeah. We should probably add, before these trails, the only way to get to the west coast of North America was you had to go in a boat all the way south around South America. And that journey took maybe a year, and it was dangerous. So, yeah, that was a big, big deal.
- [34:18]
Don Wildman
Yeah. The only way to populate the western territories at that time of America was, like I said, around the Cape Horn or a few other ways. But it had to be organized on a mass scale. If you're going to expeditiously create real populations and cities and, you know, settlements that would. That would make sense of the place that would claim it for real. And that was the function of these. These trails. They predate the railroad, which is the next phase in American history. And really they are the, like, test market of the railroad. You know, once these people are proving that they can clamor across this nation by hook and crook or something, you know, by oxen. Then, you know, when the technology comes along, all those bigwigs back in, back in New York primarily start saying, hmm, everybody wants to go out there. I think we can figure out a real good way to do it and make a lot of money while we do it.
- [35:11]
Matt Beat
Yeah, I also have a video about the Pony Express, which kind of came at the tail end right before the railroad. But yeah, the Pony Express followed, for the most part, the Oregon Trail. The railroads followed much of the Oregon Trail. Even the interstate highways today, a lot of them follow the old Oregon Trail. So they trailblazed. That's where, I mean, that's like literally. That's a term that you can literally ascribe to Oregon Trail.
- [35:36]
Don Wildman
Yeah, it's a very linear, linear history. We've referenced the famous video game Tell Me about that and how you intersected with that. Did you make use of that game in your teaching at all or was that just too dated by the time you came along?
- [35:51]
Matt Beat
Actually, westward expansion is not a very big part of the curriculum anymore, sadly. But I would make it something that my students could do like when they had extra time. But yeah, when I was in elementary school in the early 1990s, I played the Oregon Trail and I loved it. My friends and I would all fight over the computer to play it on Ms. Dos. And a lot of people my age have nostalgia for it. That's why when I made my documentary, I used that game as a guide. You know, the reason why a lot of people even know about the Oregon Trail today is the computer game.
- [36:23]
Don Wildman
It's a cool game. I went and played it myself. I hadn't played it before. I was, you know, again, it fell through the cracks of my life. I was, you know, whatever, 29 years old or something like that by the time that that game comes along. But it challenges you to understand what the pioneer experience was all about and figure out how to overcome the mishaps and obstacles that would have confronted the average pioneering wagon. One can imagine a wagon train or a single wagon having one kind of experience in 1836 or seven or eight or something like that versus another decades later, as this had become, you know, a well rutted, well traveled trail just prior to the railroads coming along and making it really easy. They must have known all the spots, they must have read about it all the way. I mean, it's really funny to think of the. To compare the two experiences.
- [37:11]
Matt Beat
Yeah, I always bring this up, this story of this woman I don't remember her name, but I learned about her on. On the trip. She had spent the majority of time on this wagon, you know, which is actually better than a lot of people, because a lot of people, they were walking next to the wagon. You know, they actually had to do it all on foot. But she was. Spent most of the entire 2,000 miles in this wagon. And as you could imagine, wagons were quite bumpy. They're not like, a smooth ride. And so there's a story of her getting to Philip Foster Farm, which is almost at the end of the trail. It was like a place where they, like, they knew that, oh, you made it this far. Oh, it's all coasting down the hill for the rest of the trip. And this lady, she gets there, and they have a room to stay in to sleep for the night. And she's walking around and she's freaking out because everything's so steady. The ground is steady. And for the last however many months, it was like she was just used to, you know, like, constantly. And so it tripped her out, and she couldn't get to sleep because of it.
- [38:14]
Don Wildman
Your film covers a lot of the institutions along the way, the museums and the historic sites. But the most telling aspect of it for me is that there are so few people when you are at these places and you're in the middle of the summer when there could be lots of them. That seemed like a bittersweet aspect of the film that there were less interest than you would have thought.
- [38:33]
Matt Beat
It was disheartening, for sure. I'm hoping this podcast and my video both maybe encourage more and more people to visit these places because they are gems and you learn a lot.
- [38:43]
Don Wildman
You know, I'm just curious. You spend all your time these days covering American history. For the most part, you're a man of a certain age, you're a father. You're living the same life that we all are in America. This current phase of division and polarity that's happening. How do you feel approaching the subject of history in this day and age? And how do you compare it to maybe when you were younger?
- [39:06]
Matt Beat
It's definitely a lot worse than it used to be. I could tell you in the classroom, it was more challenging those last few years of me teaching, because you had more and more parents that were angry about a part of the curriculum that you're supposed to teach. So, yeah, it's been pretty rough. If you're a history teacher out there listening, especially in the United States right now, solidarity. Hang in there. I hope it Gets better. Because it does seem like the thing about history is that it is often subjective. It's not objective. That's why we call it the soft science. And so you have to be as objective and neutral as possible. But a lot of times it's really difficult to do that. And that's why so many people, like, they want to teach. No, you're not teaching the rail history. You need to learn my version. That's why it's challenging.
- [39:55]
Don Wildman
I mean, I grew up at a time when. I'm Talking about the 70s, really, in the late 60s and even the 70s, a time when America was going through a real hard time in those days, I mean, I don't think that people your age and younger would know that the 70s sucked. I mean, it was really bad news. Bad inflation, we were entrenched in recession. You know, my formative years as a, I don't know, 10, 11, 12 year old were not good. Vietnam, et cetera, et cetera. It was real tough. And one of the things that comes with age is a sense of perspective and an ability to compare. Today is not that different than what I recall. The world was as I was getting older. And I used to feel sorry for myself about that when I was in my early 20s, thinking I sort of missed the boat on what my parents experienced, this great boom in America, and then America boomed again. You know, then you get Reagan and you get all these years in between all these decades that are now looked back in this sort of glowy time. It's all cyclical, is my point. And that's the message of history for me. And a hopeful one, not a pathetic one. I'm making this sound pathetic. I'm just saying that this is a fact of history. It's a fact of the world. And I think that this country, thanks to the themes and ideals that, you know, the pioneer era express, for better or worse, there were plenty of things that were wrong. But the general ideal of a better life is there to be had, is what this country has always promised. I feel that way now. I feel a little bit like I'm in the middle of Wyoming, you know, on a wagon going through a really desolate period, thinking maybe someday I'm going to get to the dolls. Maybe those evergreens they talked about are still there. And that microcosmic experience is kind of what I feel like we're going through right now. And we're sort of repeating the pioneer experience over and over again in this country. That's the luxury of being born into this great nations story that we have things to compare ourselves to, literally or figuratively. And in a way, I think we're going through the pioneer experience again.
- [41:57]
Matt Beat
Yeah. And I think that it's a universal story, and it's something we all can relate to. There's nothing more American than learning about the experience of the Oregon Trail.
- [42:06]
Don Wildman
Hey, Matt Beat. Mr. Beat, thank you so much for being on the show.
- [42:10]
Matt Beat
Thank you for having me as a guest.
- [42:13]
Don Wildman
Thanks for listening to this episode of American History hit. I hope you enjoyed it. Please don't forget to, like, review and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. I'll see you next time. This podcast includes music from Epidemic Sound.