Old Indian Trail / Oregon Trail Cattle Variation ?

[Chase]

I've seen references to the "Old Indian Trail" being the main cattle route from Hood River to either the Willamette Valley or going around the gorge, yet I've never seen it on a map.
This is not to be confused with the Columbia River (& Portage) route nor Barlow's Road. Parties taking the river would send a few men with the cattle on the Old Indian Trail while the rest of the party stayed on the river and portaged the rapids. I think people taking the Barlow route would just take their cattle with them.
Anyway, does anyone know about this? It seems to be something mentioned in quite a few OT diaries, yet the diarists themselves never seem to be the ones taking the cattle, so they only mention it in passing. Lolo Pass has been mentioned in conjunction with this, so I've doodled a map to guess that they'd go up alongside Hood River toward Lolo Pass, then either down the Bull Run area or hump it over to the Sandy.

Chase is doing some guesswork here

[raven]

Given the terrain, the Sandy route is much more likely than the Bull Run route. The pass to cross is lower and gentler, and the side hills seem less challenging. Steep slopes would have been risky when traveling with stock.

The Sandy route would be snow-free more months, a convenience the Indians would have been familiar with.

That being said, I seem to be wrong. From
http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us/doc/recor ... erlook.pdf:

In the years 1843 to 1845, some of the incoming settlers drove their
horses and cattle over an old Indian trail from The Dalles, up the east side of the
valley, passing the village of Odell, rounded the point of the hill to the westward;
thence up the west Fork of Hood River, crossed the divide, coursed the shore of
Bull Run lake and on to Oregon City, known to its users as the Walkup Trail.

[Chase]

Wow! Thanks, Raven! That's some good info. Never seen it called the Walkup Trail before. I appreciate you transcribing it, too, though there's a typo "1843 to 1845". I bring this up because I suspect the Bull Run route to have been used during those three years (and, possibly even into the 1860's on occasion), while the Sandy variation would have been easier once Barlow and Foster had their businesses in order from 1846 on.

Given the terrain, the Sandy route is much more likely than the Bull Run route. The pass to cross is lower and gentler, and the side hills seem less challenging. Steep slopes would have been risky when traveling with stock.

The Sandy route would be snow-free more months, a convenience the Indians would have been familiar with.

That being said, I seem to be wrong. From
http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us/doc/recor ... erlook.pdf:

In the years 1845 to 1845, some of the incoming settlers drove their
horses and cattle over an old Indian trail from The Dalles, up the east side of the
valley, passing the village of Odell, rounded the point of the hill to the westward;
thence up the west Fork of Hood River, crossed the divide, coursed the shore of
Bull Run lake and on to Oregon City, known to its users as the Walkup Trail.

[raven]

Thanks for telling me of the typo - I corrected it on the original. On the browser I was using at that moment up I had a lot of trouble copying the text from the PDF and had to clean up errors. Missed that one.

[CuriousGorgeGuide]

I don't know if this is on the same wavelength, but I seem to remember that Missionaries Jason and Daniel Lee came to The Dalles in 1838 via the Indian trail (Lolo Pass?) with their cattle, etc. Maybe that'll help. I have a feeling it was a "known" and viable trail, just not a trail that a wagon train could use.

[Chase]

I don't know if this is on the same wavelength, but I seem to remember that Missionaries Jason and Daniel Lee came to The Dalles in 1838 via the Indian trail (Lolo Pass?) with their cattle, etc. Maybe that'll help. I have a feeling it was a "known" and viable trail, just not a trail that a wagon train could use.

Yes! Thank you for reviving this thread.

I've had time to look into this a little more by reading some Emigrants' Guide books (a great read: Hasting's Guide; a worthy read: Johnson and Winter's guide; a fun, but not helpful read: Shiveley's "guide") and digging into old atlases at the public library. None of them mention such a route, including all the maps I could find (at least ten from the 19th C.). About to give up and write this off as something maybe a handful of settlers used, I found Mt. Hood: American Guide Series (1940, various authors). It mentions the trail:

Then in June 1859, an attempt was made by Captain A. Walker and crew to build a road southward from Hood River. It was their intention to cut a route through the forest, following the old Indian Walk-up trail through Lolo Pass to a junction with the Barlow Road near Sandy. However, the venture proved abortive and the road was never finished.
In 1883 another and more successful attempt was made...
[blah, blah, blah]
John Driver, pioneer Stockman, said that he could drive the entire distance on a long summer day. The trail, reaching 4600 feet altitude, was never popularly used, sine it was to steep for wagon travel.

I gotta find more about those Jason Lee dudes that Curious Gorge mentions...

[Chase]

Found this now, too:

*[New as of 6/26/00] LOLO PASS Heritage Trail: MT. HOOD'S Nearly Forgotten
OREGON TRAIL -- 1 Credit
Graduate -- CI 810/Undergraduate -- CI 410
Instructor: Michael P. Jones, M.S.
Fee: $110
Dates. Times, & Meeting Places: Monday, June 26 (Noon-3 p.m.) at Deep Creek
Lodge, 25580 S.E. Rebman Rd. Deep Creek (near Boring), OR; and Wednesday,
June 28 (9-4:30 p.m.), Stage Stop Road Interpretative Center, 24525 E.
Welches Road, Welches, OR.
The Cascade Mountains proved to be an infamous obstacle to those Oregon
Trail pioneers who sought to get to the Willamette Valley by by-passing the
difficult and expensive raft trip down the Columbia River. Mt. Hood's
Native American trails provided the only possible route for these
Eden-seeking emigrants, but each and every step was plagued with danger.
Prior to Samuel K. Barlow opening a toll road around the Mountain's southern
flank in 1846, the "overlanders" were forced to travel over an Ancient
Indian path along the northern side of the 11,235-foot peak. Known as the
"Walk-Up Trail" and, later, the "Daniel Lee Cattle Trail", this route was
so rugged that no covered wagon were said ever to have made it over this
path. Instead, those early travelers either rode horseback or walked in
order to reach their destination that lay somewhere in the west. This class
will take participants to various historic sites and routes associated with
this little-known trail, from the Village of Zig Zag to Lost Lake in Hood
River Valley. This special interpretative tour will take you to some of the
most scenic country in Oregon, making it an ideal educational excursion
where you will learn about the Indians, their history and mythology, the fur
traders and Mountain Men, Lewis and Clark, miners, homesteaders, and
early-day Forest Rangers and loggers, all of whom played a role in this
special passage through the Cascade Mountains.

From
http://cgs-mthood.tripod.com/ce.htm

[CuriousGorgeGuide]

Chase, that's some damn fine googling to turn up that long-lost nugget of Walk-up trail lore!! I'm glad my memory served OK in regards to Jason and Daniel Lee. I read and re-read Gorge history books most every day, when I'm not out actually searching out lost, forgotten, or never-known bits of Gorge history. I'm at work on an exploring guidebook, roughly titled "Histories and Mysteries of the Gorge" ....but what this book will focus on is/are remnants/stuff you can actually go see and explore. Thus, i read plenty of stuffs about old missionaries and all, but it sorta slips thru my transom while I try to get the other evidential stuff in order. I don't have any idea where I read about the Lees and their Dalles Mission, but I don't think it is too hard to dig up, especially by a Google talent like yourself!!
cheers, scott