First of all, the American West had been fairly well explored by people from the East before emigrants started the westward treks., so they could rely on maps and guidebooks - as well as fairly well-defined trails to direct their passage. These tended to lead them safely from one water source to the next and it tended to take them on routes that were fairly easy to traverse. Except where they weren't.

Crossing the Rockies was the easy part of the journey compared to what followed. The altitudes of the passes are not high enough to cause any significant problems except for a slight tendency among flatlanders to be short of breath and to tire more easily, but it is usually not a big deal. And the ascent was for the most part gradual enough that one wasn't even sure when one made it to the "top."

This painting, entitled Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze (1816-1868) hangs in the US Capitol and it tells us more about an Easterner's view of the West than the real West. Actually Leutze may have it right, but the official website of the Architect of the Capitol asserts that this painting is of emigrants excited because they had reached the Continental Divide, the point where creeks and rivers begin to flow to the Pacific rather than to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic. That's nuts. Anyone who has driven over the Continental Divide knows that without the sign on the highway, you wouldn't know you what you had accomplished. The view is unremarkable and the occasion is of no great note to distinguished it from what happened in the previous fifty - or the subsequent fifty miles. There would have been no jubilation for this achievement in the 1850s.

Besides the fact that emigrants would not have known they had "reached the top," anyone who knew anything would understand that the worst was ahead. The real challenges of the journey were the Great American Desert and the Sierra Nevada, both of which were part of the Great Basin of North America. There were routes that attempted to trim down how long a wagon train had to go without water, but there was no path without pain. Going across most of the Great Basin, one was able to follow some "river" course (they were often only streams, but in the parlance of the West, they were called rivers - still, water is water). Ultimately, whatever river course one was following ultimately flowed into a "sink" - an attribute of the Great Basin, meaning, a place where the water sinks into one of the expanses of playa flats, dry lake beds that are remnants of the Pleistocene complex of inland lakes that have only a few surviving remnants (Pyramid, Walker, the Great Salt Lake, and Winnemuca lakes (the last only occasionally) - and a few other places). These flats were dry, dusty, and in the height of summer they could be tortuously hot. They weren't impossible to cross, but they killed many animals and a few people, and they devoured equipment - things abandoned to lighten the load of wagons, or the wagons themselves. The crossing could be accomplished in a few days, but it was the stuff of nightmares, and it makes for a lot of images in film and television.

Having survived the crossing and reached the foothills of the Sierra, one now had weakened oxen and weakened people, and they were now facing a truly incredible wall of granite that was extremely difficult to cross (making the Rockies look like a stroll on a summer's day). Mormon ranchers had early-on established themselves at the eastern Sierra foothills where they sold emigrants fattened, healthy oxen in exchange for tired beasts and a negotiated amount of cash. In the early days, some parts of the "passes" were not wagon worthy, so wagons had to be dismantled and hoisted to the granite heights of the passes. For the most part, the trails were wagon worthy, allowing of passage with a lot of pushing and pulling from the emigrants to help the oxen. It was the worst ascent of the trip, and when the summit of the Sierra was reached, everyone knew it. The view was astounding, and it was clear that they had really accomplished something. That is the occasion, certainly, that the painting in the US Capitol captures. Anyone who has driven over Donner Summit on US 80 on the Nevada-California border will recognize the spot. But the Architect of the US Capitol maintains otherwise: I was on a tour of the Capitol when I was serving as the Chairman of the National Historic Landmarks Committee (2009-2013), when the Architect told us that this was the Continental Divide. I told him that this was clearly the granite crest of the Sierra, but the website continues the error - or perhaps the painter had never been West, and this was merely his imagining; it's hard to tell which. But the painting is more accurate in capturing the excitement of knowing that all the bad stuff was behind these travelers. It was downhill from the crest of the Sierra, and the lush California foothills made every step easier.

It was not an easy trip. Many died. But with good maps and guides, it was possible to give it a good chance of survival and success.

By the way, it was one of these guides - the soon-to-be discredited "Hasting Cutoff," which was a "proposed shortcut" - that cost the Donner Party precious days in crossing the Great Basin, landing them at the eastern foot of the Sierra late in the season, 1846, and resulting in their being caught in a succession of winter blizzards at the lake shore on the eastern side of the summit. A good guide book was essential; a bad guidebook could be death. And cannibalism.