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Page 16 text:
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Explanation of Theme On April 10, 1830, a covered wagon left St. Louis for the Rockies, the first to blaze its way along the now famous Oregon Trail. This significant event marks a turning point in our history. This movement westward was equal to the Crusades of old. But this Crusade of Immigrants was animated by the spirit of home-making, new lands, new skies, and new places for a new-born freedom. To many, this Oregon Trail is only a Western Trail; but in reality it is Eastern. Were not those early pathfinders natives of the Atlantic seaboard? Indeed, the West is comprised of a transplanted East, a blended North and South. Every Eastern State helped to win the West. Our own state of Illinois, and even our own community and vicinity of Edgar County, contributed to that far-reaching Wagon Train of migrating sons and daughters, heroes and heroines of a dramatic episode in our country’s history. In this present era there can be no complete understanding of the conditions under which those pioneers carried on. We may make the same journey along the same Oregon Trail, but we will sit back in comfort and ease. We have no fear of Indian attacks, hunger, and thirst. While today the trip is only a matter of hours, to those pioneers who left that frontier town it was not only a matter of months, but of privations, hunger, and thirst. Their exodus meant sacrifice of friends, homes, and even families; it meant sickness, and often death. But those dauntless, persevering settlers conquered the plains, rivers, and mountains. They helped to establish civilization across a continent. The iron-shod wheels of that expedition were soon to throb with life, and to mark new boundaries between nations. It made lasting changes in the world, social and economic. Much is being done to commemorate the heroism of the fathers and mothers who traversed the Oregon Trail. In a formal proclamation. President Hoover designated the period between April 10 and December 29, 1930, one in which to recall the national significance of the centenary of the great westward tide. Few of those pioneers yet live to tell their experiences. But there was one, who until a short time ago, lived to bring to us those precious memories. Ezra Meeker was born on December 29, 1830. To him is due the formation of the Oregon Trail Association. He carried to the present time the personal memory of this historic era. It has been our purpose in the publishing of the nineteen thirty-one Arena to do our little bit in commemorating the memory and hardships of those hardy pioneers, who did so much to carry civilization across the continent. —Maude Dorsett, ’31.
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