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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
By 1863, emigrant wagons and other kinds of vehicles to Oregon were following Goodale’s wagon route to the Emmett area river crossing, down the Payette, and then north and west to cross at the Olds Ferry near Farewell Bend. Of course that legitimized the Goodale’s Cutoff for that distance as … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more