This Is What Pioneers Ate on the Oregon Trail (2024)

Home Outdoor Living

ByKate Ellsworth

Taste of Home's Editorial Process

Updated: May 11, 2023

The food on the Oregon Trail included bacon, bread and bison. What more could you want?

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Love road trips? Now think about going on a road trip across five states with all of the food you need in the trunk of your car. Also, your car weighs 2,000 pounds—and it’s a wagon.

Pioneers didn’t have access to coolers or grocery stores, so food on the Oregon Trail had to survive a six-month journey. But what exactly did the pioneers eat? We did the research.

For another history lesson, learn what foods passengers ate aboard the Titanic.

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Bacon

Thank goodness, the pioneers had bacon. Cured meat was popular on the Oregon Trail as it lasts a long time. And more importantly, it’s delicious. They would cook bacon for breakfast, add it to bean-based dishes or fry it up for a mid-afternoon snack (some things never change).

Check out some of our best bacon recipes while your mouth is still watering.

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Homemade Bread

Flour was essential, and pioneers brought along thousands of pounds of it for the journey. While driving, pioneers rarely took the time to bake, but during stopping points—days where people and animals would spend the day resting—they’d make bread.

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Rice

An incredibly easy grain to store and cook, rice was popular among travelers on the trail. Pioneers could quickly whip up a large batch to feed their families, or they could take time to cook a more complex meal with meats, vegetables and spices found along the way.

Coffee

Most of us can’t imagine leaving the house without our morning coffee—can you picture driving a wagon for 12 hours without it? Pioneers knew how essential this energy booster would be, so they packed tons of it. And—fun fact—they fed it to the animals, too.

Ever heard of Scandinavian coffee?

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Pies

These are another rest-day special. Pioneers churned their own butter by attaching buckets of milk to the bottom of wagons and riding throughout the day—on rest days, they could use that butter in pie crusts to serve to fellow travelers. No two pies would be the same, as they’d use local fruits and berries to form the fillings.

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Beans and Rice

Dried beans were very common among travelers. An outdoor favorite, beans don’t require much work to cook. While pioneers enjoyed beans on their own for supper, they happily combined ’em with rice for a more filling dish.

Today, we have convenient canned beans. Here’s how to use them.

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Dried Fruit

Fresh fruit was lovely when travelers stumbled upon it, but would have been impossible to pack and carry. Dried fruit, however, is a perfect snack for the road. So perfect, in fact, that many road trippers and plane travelers still reach for this staple during present-day adventures.

Find the perfect snacks to bring to the airport.

Cornmeal Pancakes

Like flour, pioneers brought along tons of cornmeal for the trail. Cornmeal was easy to make and transport, so travelers got creative with how they used it in their meals. A favorite food on the Oregon Trail was cornmeal pancakes, which could easily be fried up over the campfire.

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Biscuits

These delicious breakfast favorites were made from both flour and cornmeal—depending on the day. Much like homemade bread, pioneers tended to whip up batches of biscuits during downtime, and enjoyed them with freshly whipped butter and crispy fried bacon.

These biscuit recipes go with everything.

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Cornmeal Mush

This one may not sound too appealing, and to be quite honest, it probably wasn’t. It’s exactly what it sounds like—water mixed with cornmeal. It’s like oatmeal, but cold and moderately flavorless. Pioneers didn’t focus too much on flavors and cooking methods—they needed energy and sustenance.

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Soup

Do you ever look around your kitchen, eyeball the leftover meats and vegetables from the week, and think, “This is perfect for a stew”? So did the pioneers. Soups and stews were a great way to serve a hot and tasty meal without too much effort. And thankfully, soups can be made from a wide variety of ingredients, making it the ideal trail dinner.

We love these hearty stew recipes.

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Hardtack

This one sounds like something sticky, or perhaps like an exotic type of fish. But really, it’s just crackers. Hardtack is a crunchy biscuit made from flour, water and salt—so essentially bread without yeast. Pioneers would chomp on these crackers dry, or soak them in water for a bit to add moisture.

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Dried Meat

Jerky is another road-trip staple that has remained popular over the years. The pioneers were big fans of dried meats, as it provided them that delicious protein without causing them to worry about spoiled food. Bison was a popular meat to preserve.

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Fresh Game

When dried meat didn’t do the trick, pioneers hunted local game. Hunting didn’t happen often on the trail—usually, it would take place during those rest days or at specific points on the trail so as not to slow down the caravan. Meat from the hunt would be dried, used in stews or cooked over the fire.

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Salmon

Many families packed fishing gear in their wagons so they could catch fish during the journey. While pioneers enjoyed freshly caught fish, they also traded Native Americans for fish and supplies. Salmon was a favorite among Oregon Trail travelers, and we can’t blame them. It’s one of our favorite dishes to make, too.

Originally Published: April 09, 2019

Author

Kate Ellsworth

Kate is an avid baker, knitter and writer. Her passions include Star Wars, stress baking and—of course—chocolate. When she's not chasing her partner around the house asking him to try her latest recipe, Kate is probably knitting (another) sweater.

This Is What Pioneers Ate on the Oregon Trail (2024)

FAQs

What did the pioneers eat on the Oregon Trail? ›

The endless walking and hard work made even the most delicate appetites ravenous. Hundreds of pounds of dried goods and cured meats were packed into the wagons, including flour, hardtack, bacon, rice, coffee, sugar, beans, and fruit.

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What did the pioneers eat for breakfast? ›

Beans, cornmeal mush, Johnnycakes or pancakes, and coffee were the usual breakfast. Fresh milk was available from the dairy cows that some families brought along, and pioneers took advantage go the rough rides of the wagon to churn their butter.

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What was the Oregon Trail be detailed in your answer? ›

The Oregon Trail was a wagon road stretching 2170 miles from Missouri to Oregon's Willamette Valley. It was not a road in any modern sense, only parallel ruts leading across endless prairie, sagebrush desert, and mountains.

What percentage of pioneers survived the Oregon Trail? ›

Between four and six percent of the emigrants died along the way - between 12,500 and 20,000 people. This is about one grave for every 200 yards of trail (the length of two football fields).

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How long did it take to walk the Oregon Trail? ›

Perhaps some 300,000 to 400,000 people used it during its heyday from the mid-1840s to the late 1860s, and possibly a half million traversed it overall, covering an average of 15 to 20 miles (24 to 32 km) per day; most completed their journeys in four to five months.

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What did pioneers carry their lunch in? ›

There were no plastic lunch boxes or thermoses on the homestead. This girl is carrying her lunch in a tin container called a lunch pail. Some families could afford to buy lunch pails for their children. Others saved empty lard or syrup buckets to use as lunch pails.

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How did pioneers keep bacon from spoiling? ›

One way to preserve bacon was to pack it inside a barrel of bran. Also, eggs could be protected by packing them in barrels of corn meal – as the eggs were used up, the meal was used to make bread. Coffee was another important staple.

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What did the pioneers eat in the winter? ›

Pioneers would dig into the side of a hill, and place some foods like root vegetables, underground. Root vegetables are foods where people eat the part that grows under the ground such as potatoes, carrots, beets, and onions.

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What was a typical Pioneer meal? ›

Breads, potatoes, rice, and starchy foods put backbone into a meal and the hungry souls who ate it. The mainstays of a pioneer diet were simple fare like potatoes, beans and rice, hardtack (which is simply flour, water, 1 teaspoon each of salt and sugar, then baked), soda biscuits (flour, milk, one t.

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How many pounds of food did pioneers have to carry to survive the Oregon Trail? ›

Families would also bring personal favorite foods, clothes, supplies, books and furniture, but had to be very mindful of weight. The recommended weight limit for the wagons was 2,000 pounds. Just the food for one family could weigh from 1,300 to 1,800 pounds leaving very little room anything else.

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How did pioneers keep meat from spoiling? ›

They placed the meat on a layer of salt and covered it with more salt, sometimes mixed with pepper and brown sugar. Salt draws moisture out of meat and thus stops the process of rotting. Some people later stored the meat buried in shelled corn, because the corn was a good insulator.

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