We can read about history in books and learn much, but we can also learn even more by riding through history. Historic Trail Rides aims to provide you with that opportunity in a part of the West that’s still as wild as it was when people in large Conestoga caravans from the East and Midwest began to move across the Rockies following the trails blazed by the trappers.

You can stop at the Oregon Trail Center just outside of Baker City, Oregon, and you can ride the country you’ll read about at the Center. It’s rugged and beautiful. It’s basin and range country, mountain and desert country, the country of Hells Canyon, the Wallowa Mountains, the Elkhorns, the Blues, the Snake River, the Columbia, and the Deschutes. This is the country of the Chief Joseph, the Nez Perce, Sacajawea, Lewis and Clark, Joe Meek, and Jesse Applegate,

It also includes high desert, a land so dry that the people on the Lost Wagon Train of 1853 had to let their stock loose to find water, figuring that the animals would smell it first, and they were right.

We’ll take you there, through the mountains and desert, through forest, and over rivers, but with water and the comfort and safety modern trail travel allows. All the same time you’ll still feel the same heat, the same chill, and see the same stars at night the explorers, trappers, and pioneers saw in this incredible country.