The Wagon trains to California greatly decreased in 1851 as reports of deadly cholera on the trail the year before and strikeouts in gold prospecting became known.
Volume 3 of Covered Wagon Women contains the Diaries and Letters of six Oregon-bound women, as well as the journal of an English Mormon woman who descr.
Those who did go west-about 2,160 men and 1,440 women-tended toward Oregon\'s rich Willamette Valley because of a new federal land law that awarded a husband and wife a full section.
The Wagon trains to California greatly decreased in 1851 as reports of deadly cholera on the trail the year before and strikeouts in gold prospecting became known