Goodale North Trail

Only a few people, relatively impermanent, went to the Weiser River area as early1864-65. Within a few years, while the Crane Creek variant of the “Tim Goodale road” was in use, about 1867 in larger numbers, many ranches and towns people began to populate the area from Middle Valley west, east, and north to above the Council valley. From that time mixed-occupation residents helped towns develop there, and the preponderance of the evidence proves that those emigrants who came from the east through Boise followed this central Crane Creek route. We know that Brownlee left his Ferry in 1864, but […]

The collection of this information together does generate some possibilities to think about that have before been little considered. The joining together of several trains at Champagne Meadow to cross the southern Jeffrey-Goodale Cutoff, and the several divisions of the same in the Boise Valley and along the Boise River does complicate the matter. It appears that the divisions back on the Oregon Trail were not always according to the original make up of each prior train. The division of the early Goodale Train, some to go on the new route through central Idaho and some down the old Oregon

The Oregon Trail related Cutoff from near the crossing of the Snake River at the Fort Hall site and through south-central Idaho to Ditto Creek, near Mountain Home, for some time commonly known as “Goodale’s Cutoff,” has by 2005 been extensively researched, documented, and mapped. The evidence indicates that it should be more appropriately called the “Jeffrey-Goodale Cutoff,” because of John Jeffrey’s influence in getting emigrants to follow that route 10 years earlier than Tim Goodale’s Wagon Train reopened the trail. And, indeed, the name “Jeffrey’s Road” was used on some earlier maps and records before someone substituted the name

The Goodale Train no doubt divided from the Curtis and Slater occupied train near the Boise crossing. But that western-bound train did not necessarily plan to cross there, probably thinking that they would cross at the normal crossing at Caldwell. This they were not allowed to do when they got to that point because of the high water. Then at some vague location downriver from there when Mr. Curtis was the first to try to cross he was drowned. The consideration mentioned above that by only a remote possibility Dunham Wright may have witnessed the drowning of Mr. Curtis, is

The first fact considered is that from all the information we have available it seems that the long train that had followed Goodale from Champagne Meadow in Butte County began to divide back down into several smaller trains, some even before reaching the area of Boise. And it follows then that there were different routes decided upon by the different trains, even three separate routes to the Oregon border! This will be discussed later. Part of the train that followed Goodale to Salubria/Cambridge area wanted to stay in Idaho and go to the Florence area, and part was headed for

The foregoing information has been presented to help dispel the doubts that the Goodale North variant through Crane Creek-called “Tim Goodale road” by some writers in informational road accounts and being used by pack trains in fall of 1862, only weeks after Goodale’s Train-soon became a wagon/emigrant train traveled road for many years, first to Boise Basin. We will look at some of the travel accounts found. Though they are somewhat sparse, compared to numbers of journals and accounts left behind by travelers on other trail routes, they do illustrate well the movement of emigrants for several years along the

As stated in the introduction, we hope to amend the concept that the only true emigrants on the Oregon Trail system, had to go on to Oregon or at least to the Northwest beyond Idaho. When one hears in discussions about the Goodale North route that most travelers north of Boise were “only miners with pack trains, not emigrants with wagons” (as we will see not an overall accurate assessment), a concept seems to be implied that miners were not really emigrants! We will examine the evidence. One primary and dependable record from 1863 seems to be appropriate here, which