Goodale North Trail

By 1863, there were stages running to Boise and back to Umatilla. From 1857 until 1860, several settlers had homesteaded along the Columbia River in the area of present Umatilla. The rush of some of the miners in 1861 brought the growth of hotels and/or stations in the area, and large numbers of cattle were brought in to graze along the river bottom. Then the discovery of the Powder River mines in 1862 brought even more growth as they traveled “through the Umatilla Country and across the Blue mountains.” [1]Oregon Genealogy, “Final Settlement of Umatilla County, Oregon,” Oregon Genealogy Records, […]

We have already described both the original route from the Weiser area to the Cambridge Valley, and the central variant from Emmett north to the Little Weiser River and beyond. Both the continuation of the Goodale North from the lower Weiser area, and the variant north from Emmett, saw less early traffic than the part of the road that continued on to the Olds Ferry, crossing into Oregon, but both were the legitimate routes on to the upper Weiser River valley and to the Brownlee Ferry crossing of the Snake River. We do repeat the fact of the probable little

Though an early resident of the Emmett area, Nellie Ireton Mills, wrote that the Goodale Train crossed the Payette River near Emmett and followed the north side, her information was not documented with her sources. (Her information was incorrect when she had written that Dunham Wright and other miners’ wagons had gone north from Emmett toward Florence, that which they did only when they reached the upper Weiser River valley near Cambridge.) Her information did state that the 1862 Goodale Train crossed and went down the north side of the river, but she thought Goodale had left the train by

The name “Goodale” alone must be attached to the original route from Boise to Emmett, on down the Payette River, and then northerly from where Goodale would have departed from the later Olds Ferry road and crossed the Weiser River. His route on through Middle Valley, and to an eventual second encounter with the Weiser River, was also said to have been an old Indian trail. The wagon road that passed that way after Goodale, a poor road that it was, seemed to have been only improved much later, but was certainly part of his “Cutoff.” If that part of

Though at some earlier time researchers evidently did not find enough information to include the Goodale North routes in the publishing of Emigrant Trails of Southern Idaho, it is now hoped that this paper, further research, and more on-the-trail discovery of the trail ruts will provide enough information and documentation that this part of the exclusive “Goodale Cutoff” would be included in any future revision and republication of that book. Of course along with this information, many days of ground footwork will be done to find and map the remaining ruts from Boise north. The original routes along and north

Here we pause and pose some related questions that will be considered later. In which of these two groups would Dunham Wright have been traveling? (His stories 79 years later were the main source for the controversy about the place of the Goodale crossing of the Boise River!) He wrote in 1923, 61 years later, “Here [unspecified location] our train divided, all but about 15 wagons going on down to old Fort Boise and crossing the Snake River.” That was more than double the seven wagons of the Colorado Train! Wherever that location was at, it seems understood that he

The S. H. Taylor party pulled out Thursday morning for Washington Territory. The party consists of S. H. Taylor, wife and 2 daughters, Perry Taylor, wife and child, Elijah Ledington and family, Daniel Ledington and family, Alfred Cory and family, C. W. Stewart and family, Oliver Godlove, Leason Cory and some others whose names we did not learn. They go to some place in the interior of Washington Territory. [1]Merrie Pinick, Havensville, Pottawatomie Co, Ks. Area working database (Pottawatomie: October 18, 2004), http://awt.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=mp648&id=I21151 , Ancesry.com … Continue reading Frank Mosley listed “other pioneers” that came to the Salubria and Mann Creek

We now have direct information that substantiates that the central Crane Creek route was chosen by emigrants as early as 1867, and probably some even earlier, and as late as the 1880s, many coming from the southern and eastern U. S. Though the original Mann Creek part of the western route seemed by 1870 to be a better road-improved by settlers along the Creek-those heading to the Middle Valley still drove north through Crane Creek and back west and SW to Midvale. This middle variant of the Goodale North offered the best route to a large area all along the

Moses Splawn, one of the Grimes party, the hungry miners that found the Goodale Train camped on the Boise River, wrote that they “constructed a raft and crosses over to where the emigrants were camped.” This was surely from the north side of the river to the south, and near the steep banks described by Nellie Slater where they had camped on August 9th. Splawn wrote that as the Grimes mining party came down the Boise River (from the east) some distance prior to their encounter they had seen the Goodale Train approaching the river area in a dust cloud,