Weisiger, MarshaClark, Kali2023-09-282023-09-282023-06https://hdl.handle.net/1794/2892251 pagesHundreds of thousands of individuals and their families made the journey westward on the Overland Trail during the nineteenth century, most commonly between the years 1840 and 1880. For decades afterwards, historians wrote of this journey and its significance in American history. However, these historians often did not include a large portion of the travelers in their analysis. Women were not taken much into account when researching the overland journey, despite the wealth of details provided within women’s trail diaries. When women were included in Overland Trail scholarship, they were often characterized as fragile, unwilling participants in the move westward. This paper aims to reframe the involvement of women in the journey to the western frontier and contextualize their experiences within their own written accounts. Too often, women are mentioned only in their relation to men within historical scholarship. I analyzed nine women’s accounts of their journey in order to gain insight on women’s experience, not as wives or mothers, but as human beings coping with a wholly unique situation. I found that women demonstrated significant acts of resilience in their struggles with grief, exhaustion, and isolation. In these moments, women connected with the other women of their party as well as the natural landscape, drawing inspiration and comfort from both. Even with these coping methods, the trail was still a deeply challenging place to be for women. The journey was a truly personal experience, one that would follow the women for the rest of their lives.enCreative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0-USOregon TrailwomenU.S. HistoryOverland TrailThesis / Dissertation