The Oregon Trail

Classics Illustrated, 1950. — 52 pages.Francis Parkman, Jr. (1823 – 1893) was an American historian, best known as author of The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life. The book has since become "the perennial favorite of highschool reading lists". The account of a summer tour of the High Plains of Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, and Kansas met with the acclaim of early reviewers like Herman Melville, who, though he on the whole lauded the book for "the true wild-game flavor," complained of its demeaning presentation of Native Americans and its misleading title. (Parkman's excursion led him only along the first third, the flat stretch of the 2,100 mile trail; he never saw the cruelest parts across the mountains and deserts.)