The Terrible Trail

The crude road the scouts found was the road the train had set out for. Willamette Valley settlers had raised money for a toll-free road over Willamette Pass, the Free Emigrant Road, and its sponsors sent Elijah Elliott east in 1853 to bring a train in by it. Heavy snow had kept its builders from marking the crest. Lost in the desert, the train reached the mountains as October storms began. A young schoolteacher, Martin Blanding, rode ahead along the road crew's cuts until settlers found him at his fire beside the Willamette; relief came up the Middle Fork.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Malheur National Wildlife Refuge — 25 mi
  A lake-and-marsh refuge set aside for its birds in 1908 that had to buy a river's water to keep them, and now fights the carp that have eaten away its marshes.

More markers nearby

• Great Basin — 10.0 mi
• American Indian Seasonal Round — 24 mi