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Meek Cutoff
Wagon trail of the 19th century
Meek Cutoff
Meek Cutoff was a wagon trail that branched off the Oregon Trail in eastern Oregon and was used as an alternate emigrant route to the Willamette Valley in the mid-19th century. The trail was named for frontiersman Stephen Meek, who was hired to lead the first wagon train along it in 1845. The journey was a particularly hard one, and many of the pioneers lost their lives. Starting where the Oregon Trail leaves the Snake River Plain and heads northwest toward the Columbia River Gorge (the general route of modern Interstate 84), Meek's party intended to instead head west across the Oregon High Desert, straight to the Willamette Valley. They left the main trail at Vale, Oregon and followed the Malheur River to head into the Harney Basin. They then turned west towards Wagontire Mountain and northwest to the south fork of the Crooked River. At this point, due to hardship, the party split into two groups, each of which found the Deschutes River. The two groups reunited north of where the Crooked...
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