Over the course of fifty years, almost 400,000 people traveled the 2,170-mile route, leaving their farms along the East Coast in hopes of securing fertile land in the Oregon Territory.
American artist Albert Bierstadt documented his journey on the trail, capturing the dramatic panoramas and indomitable spirit of the emigrants on his oversized canvases. With their rich colors and pristine details, these romanticized images roused an already fascinated American public to begin their own westward adventure.
]]>Redefined by territorial expansion in the mid-1800s, the boundary of the American West shifted from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, fueled largely by exploration and emigration along the Oregon Trail, among others.
Over the course of fifty years, almost 400,000 people traveled the 2,170-mile route, leaving their farms along the East Coast in hopes of securing fertile land in the Oregon Territory.
American artist Albert Bierstadt documented his journey on the trail, capturing the dramatic panoramas and indomitable spirit of the emigrants on his oversized canvases. With their rich colors and pristine details, these romanticized images roused an already fascinated American public to begin their own westward adventure.
Oil on canvas
67" x 102"
This painting has come to represent the ideal of Manifest Destiny.
This painting is an allegorical representation of the modernization of the new west. Here Columbia, a personification of the United States, leads civilization westward with American settlers, stringing telegraph wire as she sweeps west; she holds a school book as well. The different stages of economic activity of the pioneers are highlighted and, especially, the changing forms of transportation.
This painting has come to represent the ideal of Manifest Destiny.
Museum of the American West
Griffith Park, Los Angeles, CA
Oil painting
12 ¾” x 16 ¾”