The sea route was favored by gold seekers from the eastern states.Seasickness was rampant; food was full of bugs, or worse-rancid. Water stored for months in a ship’s hold was almost impossible to drink. And then there was the boredom—months and months at sea with nothing to do, except dream about gold. The wait was intolerable. To satisfy the growing thirst for speed, a quicker route was soon employed across Panama. It seemed like a logical shortcut. But traversing the rainforests of Central America in the 1840s was an adventure in itself. Malaria and cholera were common. Those who survived to see the Pacific faced another dilemma—they were stranded. Ships to ferry them up the coast to San Francisco were rare. And so the forty-niners waited for weeks—or months, in overcrowded, disease-infested coastal towns.For Americans who lived in the central states, there was another way west— a well-worn path carved out several years earlier: the Oregon-California Trail. The overland road was much shorter than the sea route, but it wasn’t faster. Most had no idea how severe the overland journey would be. J.S. Holliday, author of “The World Rushed In”:“The people who went to California by the the tens of thousands were greenhorns—city folks. They didn’t have a callus on their hand, had never fired a rifle, had never followed a plow, had never rode a horse, didn’t know up from down in terms of the wilderness world, the frontier life. And they weren’t interested in it.”All they could think about was gold as they plodded westward alongside covered wagons at two miles per hour—for up to six months. The first weeks on the trail took the adventurers along the Platte River, past landmarks like Chimney Rock, Courthouse Rock, and Scotts Bluffs. Military outposts like Ft. Laramie were most important as post offices—places to send letters to eager families back h...
