7 Things Pioneers Did Before Dark to Survive the Night

A wagon train stopped in the afternoon, not at dark. Everything that had to happen before nightfall took hours, and the order mattered. Subscribe to Drygulch. Camp was not rest. It was the second working shift of a pioneer's day, and every one of its tasks was a point of failure that could cost a family its animals, its wagon or a child before morning. This is the evening sequence as the trail diaries and emigrant guides describe it on the Oregon and California trails in the 1840s and 1850s — seven actions, in the order they were done, and what happened to the wagon trains that skipped one. Everyone was up again at four in the morning. CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 2:43 Twenty Miles Before Camp Began 8:34 The Corral And How It Closed 9:43 The Myth Of The Wagon Fort 11:07 Stock, Water, And The Real Disaster 14:53 Fire, Bread, And The Women's Work 16:28 Ground Cloth, Watch, And Order 19:52 The Wheel That Broke On Tuesday 22:34 The Arithmetic Of No Sleep 24:08 The Unmarked Graves Debate 25:49 Outro #Pioneers #OregonTrail #OldWest #WagonTrain #FrontierLife #WildWest #AmericanFrontier #Survival #FrontierHistory #AmericanHistory #Documentary #Drygulch