Ranger in Time: Rescue on the Oregon Trail depicts pioneers’ experiences on the Oregon Trail in a fairly realistic way while being age-appropriate for young readers. The Oregon Trail was a long-distance wagon route that stretched over 2,000 miles from Independence, Missouri, through Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Idaho to the Oregon Territory (modern-day Washington and Oregon). In the mid-1800s, approximately 300,000-500,000 people used this trail to navigate their way westward.

European Americans first accessed the US West by sea; they explored and established trading posts, especially for the fur trade. In the early 1800s, other European Americans created overland routes westward. Led by Shoshone guide Sacagawea, explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark traveled across the northern US from 1804 to 1806, reaching Washington state. The Oregon Trail was created in 1812 by Robert Stuart, an American Fur Company employee. Tasked with bringing messages from the company’s westernmost trading post to inland posts, Stuart traveled east from Oregon. To traverse the country, he used trails already established by local Indigenous peoples and identified a passable wagon route through the Rockies called “South Pass.” By linking these different trails together, Stuart created what came to be known as the Oregon Trail (“

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