# Wagon Trail 1848 — Sources Historical facts used for the game's educational flavor text are drawn from the sources below. Anything presented in-game as fact must be traceable to an entry here. "Verified live" means the page was read in full during research on 2026-09-26 and 2026-09-27; "index" means it was captured from search-result text and should be re-verified before use. ## Core sources 1. National Park Service, "Death and Danger on the Emigrant Trails" — https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/death-on-trails.htm — verified live. Mortality ("longest graveyard," nearly 1 in 10 of ~350,000, 1841–1869), cholera as the #1 killer (~30,000 disease deaths), drownings as the most dangerous activity, wagon accidents, accidental shootings, weather, Native Americans "usually among the least of the emigrants' problems." 2. Oregon-California Trails Association, "Final Leg of the Oregon Trail" — https://octa-trails.org/articles/final-leg-of-the-oregon-trail/ — index. Columbia River rapids, gorge winds, portages, HBC bateaux (~$80), Barlow Road (1846, used by >2/3 of emigrants), Fort Vancouver and McLoughlin's credit to penniless arrivals. 3. Wikipedia, "Route of the Oregon Trail" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_of_the_Oregon_Trail — index. South Pass (broad, gradual, ~7,417 ft), Sweetwater crossings (up to nine), Green River ferries, Sublette–Greenwood Cutoff, Bear River Divide / Big Hill, McAuley Cutoff (1852), Fort Bridger, Fort Hall, Fort Boise. 4. NPS, "National Historic Trails Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide — Across Wyoming" — http://home.nps.gov/orgs/1453/upload/National-Historic-Trails-Auto-Tour-Route-Interpretive-Guide-Across-Wyoming.pdf — index. Green River "said to claim a life a day"; Sublette Cutoff details. 5. Three Island Crossing narrative (Idaho) — https://www.idahofriends.org/uploads/5/2/5/3/52533793/threeislandcrossingnarrative.pdf — index. "Most treacherous river crossing on the entire Trail," rope-team crossings, Shoshone guides, August 21 schedule rule. 6. Historic Oregon City, "Oregon Trail Mileposts" — https://historicoregoncity.org/2019/04/03/oregon-trail-mileposts/ — index. Blue Mountains grades, Grande Ronde Valley, Whitman Mission (to Nov 1847). 7. Offbeat Oregon History, "Grande Ronde Valley used-oxen dealership" — http://offbeatoregon.com/1709b.grande-ronde-valley-used-oxen-dealership-460.html — index. Tribal traders exchanging two played-out oxen for one fresh animal. 8. Trail Research, "Oregon Trails Over the Blue Mountains, 1811–1852" — https://trailresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/Oregon-Trails-Over-the-Blue-Mountains-1811-1852.pdf — index. 9. OCTA, "Oregon Trail Mileposts" — https://octa-trails.org/articles/oregon-trail-mileposts/ — index. Sublette Cutoff as "arguably the worst stretch of the Trail." 10. HISTORY.com, "Donner Party" — https://www.history.com/articles/donner-party — index. Late May 12, 1846 departure, Hastings Cutoff delay, Oct 28 snowfall. 11. MotorTrend, "The Sublette Cutoff" — https://www.motortrend.com/events/0906-4wd-the-sublette-cutoff — index. 12. The Free Library, "Making history again on the Oregon Trail" — http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Making+history+again+on+the+Oregon+Trail-a013840724 — index. Independence Rock by July 4 schedule rule. 13. Simple Wikipedia, "Oregon Trail" — https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Trail — index. Unruh mortality estimate (~4%, 16,000 of 400,000); cholera killing within ~12 hours of symptoms; dysentery ("bloody flux") treated with castor oil. 14. OCTA, "Life and Death on the Oregon Trail" — https://octa-trails.org/articles/life-and-death-on-the-oregon-trail/ — index. Cholera as the "unseen destroyer" (healthy in the morning, dead by evening); river wheels wrecked by unseen rocks in slow, shallow water. 15. APHL Blog, "The Oregon Trail may be long gone, but not the diseases that lined its path" — https://www.aphlblog.org/the-oregon-trail-may-be-long-gone-but-not-the-diseases-that-lined-its-path/ — index. 1849 cholera epidemic killing thousands along the Nebraska and Kansas portions of the trail. 16. NAU Oregon Trail science lesson plan (student work, Gilly H./Kelly M.) — https://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~pjp/LessonPlans/OregonTrailScience.pdf — index. Dysentery "thought to be caused by contaminated food or water"; best period treatment rest with fluid and salt. 17. Wikipedia, "Oregon Trail" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Trail — index. Fort Hall (purchased from Wyeth by the HBC in 1837), Fort Boise, and Fort Nez Percé gave "substantial and often desperately needed aid to the early Oregon Trail pioneers"; most emigrants "made it without an extreme amount of hardship," the Donner Party being the spectacular exception; the party broke up, with younger men going ahead to send back help. 18. Grateful American Foundation, "What famous wagon featured the phrase: 'Oregon Or The Grave'?" — https://gratefulamericanfoundation.org/what-famous-trial-had-its-first-wagon-depart-on-may-1st-1839/ — verified live 2026-09-27. The Peoria Party (18 men, May 1, 1839) carried a flag reading "Oregon Or The Grave"; half gave up on the trek in Colorado, the remaining nine reached Oregon. (Used in-game for the settle-at-fort flavor text.) 19. RootsWeb, "History of Wyoming — Chapter XXVII" — https://sites.rootsweb.com/~wytttp/history/countant/chapter27.htm — index. Parties wintering, abandoning wagons to continue on horseback, and return parties from Oregon met on the trail (Moses Harris guiding one in 1847); Brigham Young ordering men to remain at river crossings to ferry following trains — emigrants routinely stopped, split up, wintered over, or turned back rather than press on to destruction. ## Known disagreements / open questions - Total mortality: NPS "nearly 1 in 10" vs. Unruh's 4%. Report the band (4–10%), never a single figure as settled fact. - Green River drowning tolls by year (e.g., "37 in 1850") are single-source; treat as illustrative, not factual. - Per-segment death counts are unavailable; graves were mostly unmarked. - One outlier source attributes 3,000–4,500 deaths to Native American attacks; this conflicts with the NPS assessment and is not used. ## Asset policy All game code and assets are clean-room: written from scratch, no copied code, text, or images. Web companion pages use AI-generated imagery only — never hotlinked or copied web images. Generated images are reviewed for historical accuracy (period-correct wagons, clothing, landscapes) before publishing, since generation can introduce anachronisms. ### Approved art direction (set 2026-09-26, Aaron-approved) All project imagery uses one cohesive style: simple stylized flat illustration with a vintage storybook look — strict side-profile view for subjects, limited warm color palette (warm cream sky, layered blue mountains, golden prairie), clean simple shapes, minimal detail. No text, no signature, no watermark. ### Image pipeline 1. Nova generates the image. 2. Nova accuracy-verifies with zoomed crops: direction of travel consistent, correct limb counts on people and animals, yoked ox pairs (never single oxen, never udders — oxen are castrated males), 1840s clothing, each wagon hitched only to its own team, clear gaps between wagon units. 3. Aaron gives final approval. 4. The image ships with a documented provenance note (AI-generated, generated date, verified and approved).