Overland Trails : 4^th-5^th grade

Background Information

• Background for Teachers

Activities

• Activity 1: Where did the trails go?
• Activity 2: Why did people travel on the trails?
• Activity 3: Starting on the Trails in Johnson County
• Activity 4: Hardships and Dangers on the Trail
• Activity 5: Clothing

To Learn More

Links on this website

• “Starting on the Trails in Johnson County.” ALBUM, Fall 1992.
• “History Just Ahead: Historic Markers of Johnson County.” ALBUM, Fall 2005.

Books for Teachers

• Faragher, John Mark. Women and Men on the Overland Trail. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.
• Franzwa, Gregory M. The Oregon Trail Revisited. St. Louis: Patrice Press, 1988.
• Horn, Huston. The Pioneers. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1974.
• Drumm, Stella, ed. Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico: The Diary of Susan Shelby Magoffin, 1846-1847. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982.
• Morgan, Dale, ed. Overland in 1846: Diaries and Letters of the Overland Experience. 2 vols. Georgetown, CA: Talisman Press, 1963.
• Myers, Sandra L., ed. Ho for California: Women's Overland Diaries from the Huntington Library. San Marino: Huntington Library, 1980.
• Rounds, Glen. The Prairie Schooners. New York: Holiday House, Inc., 1968.
• Russell, Marian. Land of Enchantment: Memoirs of Marian Russell along the Santa Fe Trail. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981.
• Schlissel, Lillian. Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey. New York: Schocken Books, 1982.
• Simmons, Marc, ed. On the Santa Fe Trail. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1986.
• Unruh, John D. The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-60. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982.

Books for Students

• Byars, Betsy. The Golly Sisters Go West. Harper, 1986. Illustrated.
  May-May and Rose Golly travel westward in a covered wagon, entertaining crowds and having misadventures along the way.
• Chambers, Catherine. Frontier Dream: Life in the Great Plains. Troll, 1984.
  A Scandinavian family relocates from Omaha to the Dakota territory and struggles to make a home on the plains. Characters are individualized, hardships and set-backs are described, and the book gives a feeling for the vastness and loneliness of the Great Plains.
• Levitan, Sonia. The No-Return Trail. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978.
  This fictionalized account of the Bidwell-Bartleson expedition to California in 1841 recreates the hardships and dangers of that journey. Seventeen-year-old Nancy Kelsey is the first woman to make the grueling overland passage.
• MacLachlan, Patricia. Sarah, Plain and Tall. Harper & Row, 1985.
  Anna and Caleb need a mother; their father, Jacob, needs a wife; so Sarah Wheaton agreed to come West from Maine for a month to get to know them. As she joins in the everyday tasks of farm life, Sarah endears herself to the family.
• Parkman, Francis. The Oregon Trail. Farrar and Rinehart, 1931.
  Considered one of the best books written about the West and a faithful record of life beyond the Mississippi before the California Gold Rush in 1849.
• Round, Glen. Mr. Yowder and the Windwagon. Holiday House, 1983.
  Mr. Yowder attempts to change the great ox-drawn wagons used to carry emigrants across the plains into swift schooners, or “windwagons.”
• Waddell, Martin. Going West. Harper, 1984. Illustrated.
  An accurate and easily understood account of the hardships faced by pioneers at the time of Westward movement as recorded in a small girl's diary as she and her family travel west in a wagon train.
• Webb, Dave. Adventures with the Santa Fe Trail: An Activity Book for Kids and Teachers. Kansas Heritage Center, 1989.
  An activity book covering different aspects of the Santa Fe Trail. Includes biographies of “Trail Travelers.”
• Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House on the Prairie. Harper, 1953.
  One of 8 titles by Laura Ingalls Wilder of her memories of her pioneer childhood.

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